


(with no you at all) i'm incomplete

by Anonymous



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Break Up, Canon Universe, Consent Issues, Debatable Narcissism, M/M, Pining, Polyamory, Sympathetic Deceit Sanders, it's about ethics in dating your metaphysical selves who might not be able to actually reject you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-28
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:29:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 27,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21598204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: This all could have been avoided if Thomas was less of a disaster gay. But, no, he justhasto be in love with four different men, all of whom are aspects of his personality.
Relationships: Anxiety | Virgil/Creativity | Roman/Logic | Logan/Morality | Patton, Anxiety | Virgil/Creativity | Roman/Logic | Logan/Morality | Patton/Thomas Sanders, Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders/Thomas Sanders
Comments: 81
Kudos: 167
Collections: anonymous





	1. wherein thomas asks if anyone can find him someone to love, and princey puts forth himself for consideration

**Author's Note:**

> hi. you might know me from the fic series where patton dies and it results in depression. this is not as dark. i like lamp fics, but it's kind of mean to have the four main parts of a guy kissing each other, and not the actual guy. character!thomathy deserves love, guys!!!
> 
> edit (29/11): fixed some wordings!!!
> 
> edit (8/2): changed the summary. will probably change it again

This all could have been avoided if Thomas was less of a disaster gay. But, no, he just had to be the kind of guy who’d fall for anyone who looked at him softly, or with a smile, or with deliberate eye contact after glancing down his body. The cute barista makes his coffee and smiles when he calls his name: crush. The dance captain in _Guys and Dolls_ was tactile and kind in his corrections: crush, but he can’t think about that. On the rare occasion that he goes out clothes shopping and a guy apologises when they bump into each other: crush.

Thomas falls fast, and falls hard. And he just _has_ to bring out his Sides to discuss his inevitable loneliness.

It makes no logical sense, that Princey can speak Spanish, and neither does the huge Dragon Witch that was murdered in the middle of the living room. With… A katana? It’s familiar, though. Wasn’t it from another production?

The Prince is Thomas’s pride, and ego, and the one who suggested _“Self-love!”_ when they discussed non-romantic kinds of love. He’s literally the Prince! He’s based off of all of the characters that Thomas fell in love with as he watched them on the TV screen, in both Disney and Roger and Hammerstein’s Cinderella. He’s Aladdin, and Eric, and Adam, and Philip, and… Probably not John Smith. Yeah, that one’s a bit… _Yeah_.

It’s a really convoluted, stupid way of saying that Thomas looked at Princey, sinking out while dragging a dragon corpse across the carpet, with his hair slightly ruffled and his head held high, and, well.

_Crush_.

The worst thing is, it’s not even a normal crush, where he can hide it away and pretend that it doesn’t exist when he talks to that person, because that person _is himself_. Princey is a _part_ of Thomas. It’s not even like with Logic or Morality, because there’s no reason for them to know. There’s nothing logical or moral about crushing on yourself. Anxiety… _Might_ know, but, then again, he brings up all of Thomas’s insecurities whenever he can, and Thomas isn’t sure if he’d be cruel enough to point out that particular shortcoming.

So sometimes, when he daydreams, and it’s not about the boy who smiles at him while they dance, he falls into Princey’s arms. Princey, who will hold him and save him from villains who lock him in towers, and who’ll take him on epic quests where they sleep together under the starry sky. They are superheroes fighting crime, and patching each other up when one of them gets into more trouble than they can handle. They’re wizards, casting spells and brewing potions that smell of the backstage of theatres and familiar cologne.

It’s humiliating, to share such close, tender moments with yourself. Sometimes, he’ll look into his eyes and see some sort of pity, and the knowledge that Thomas hides away from; that this is only a temporary thing, until he stops being so pathetic as to lust after his own self.

And, the _lust_-

The less Thomas says about that, or even _thinks_, the better.

Logic would say that these kinds of daydreams are unsustainable, but Logic doesn’t know. At least, he says nothing, though that might be because he’s busy looking for clues as to what’s causing this procrastination issue. Thomas figures that it’s even less likely when he calls up Princey, and nothing’s different, even though Thomas feels like his heart is about to pound out of his chest.

It’s definitely loud enough for Anxiety to notice, and he glances between the Thomas and Princey before raising an eyebrow, which is… Okay. Okay, he’s not saying anything, so that’s okay.

This is not when Thomas falls fast and hard for Logic. This is just the moment that he realises that they’re all more than Creativity, or Logic, or anything. They’re four quarters of Thomas himself, with their own names and thoughts and feelings. That’s not just Logic, identical to Thomas, with the Prince’s broad shoulders and chocolate-coffee eyes. That’s Logan, who finds calm in order, and steady planning, even while the rest of Thomas would rather hide away, or jump forwards without looking to see where he’ll land, metaphorically.

He wonders what Princey’s real name is.

During the Q&A, Thomas keeps finding himself distracted by Princey’s answers, but also intrigued by the others’. He would drink enough coffee to stop his heart so he could listen to Princey perform a duet with Jigglypuff. Logi- No, _Logan’s_ penchant for precision and lecturing on his favourite topics becomes endearing, if it wasn’t already.

Morality’s adorable enthusiasm almost sparks something, before it’s immediately dampened by the reminder of his bladder’s failure to function at his elementary school concert. _Wow_. Like, the whole ‘_clueless_’ thing? It’s cute, but-

Wait. What does Thomas mean by ‘_cute_’?

He squashes that one down.

* * *

Princey tells him all kinds of ideas; everything that pops into his head and then some. Thomas hasn’t felt like he’d grown as a person so much in such a short amount of time since he was a teenager, or since _that time_.

How can the start of a love, one that only fell apart a few short months ago, feel so far in the past? He can’t stand to think of it. He can’t stand to use the Prince – use _himself_ – as some kind of screwed-up rebound. He can’t let this be the re-enactment of a love that went rotten. He can’t do that to either of them.

So, Thomas gives Princey full creative control, when he asks for it. Thomas tries to show trust in himself, and fall along with every idea that passes them by.

He tries not to let his stomach curl in jealousy when Anxiety gets called _“My Chemically-imbalanced Romance.”_

He tries to not let his stomach twist in a different way, when he sees Morality be pulled in with nothing on his legs but his underwear. And those legs are like Thomas’s. Soft, creamy thighs that would pillow out a little when he sits, and-

_No_. No, he’s _not_ going there.

And, then, Morality calls him a _‘lover’_? Doesn't he understand the connotations of the words he uses? Or _does_ he, and he’s just messing with Thomas? Because, well, Thomas knows the meaning of the word _‘adultery’_, even if Morality seems a little less knowledgeable on it.

Why can’t he just understand himself better? He’s got all of these aspects of his personality, and all of them are so different, and it’s as if he’s learnt how to play ukulele, just to discover that he was supposed to be playing piano all this time.

It’s not his best metaphor. His Creativity’s kind of feeling bad, even with the reassurance that everyone (excepting Anxiety) is giving him.

Then, when everyone’s sunk out except for Princey, the real conversation begins.

“It’s just that… Thomas, my love, I’ve only ever pushed you to follow your dreams, and I never have a bad word to say about you,” the Prince says.

His voice is soft, like those starry nights where their fingers and legs get tangled together, and the soil they rest their heads on can be as clean as freshly-laundered bedsheets. In the bright living room of Thomas’s apartment, rather than the dim lights of his bedroom at night, Princey seems vulnerable in a way that he never is in their imagined worlds.

“Why don’t you listen to me more?” he asks. His eyes are wide and pleading as he takes Thomas’s hand; presses it to his lips; holds it to his chest. Thomas can feel an imagined heartbeat, throbbing and pounding against his knuckles. “I’m okay with you only lo-_liking_ me when you want to deem me useful, but _please_, just _tell_ me.”

Thomas freezes. Part of him – not a Side, but _him_ himself – wants to wrench his hand away from his Prince. He wants to hold it to his own chest, so he can feel if there’s really a gaping hole where his heart once was, or if that’s really just a turn of phrase.

“Oh.” Thomas’s voice comes out weakly, like it hurts to say. It _does_, but his Prince deserves better than some feeble-voiced fool floundering to give words to his emotions. “P-Princey, I-”

“Roman,” his- His _Roman_ interrupts. “That’s my real name.”

It takes a moment for that to sink in. _Roman_. An empire of kings and battles. A time of myths and monsters, and gods that were slain.

Prince Roman. Of course that’s his name. What else could he be?

“Roman,” Thomas says, feeling the name on his tongue, and in his mouth, and through his lips. _Roman_; dear, darling, _love_.

He can’t say it.

“You’re so important to me,” he says, instead, trying to weigh his words with everything he leaves unsaid. “I don’t know what I’d do without you. I don’t know who I’d _be_ without you, and I don’t want to find out. But-” And his meaning shifts, because everyone became upset, today, in some way, and Thomas can’t live inside Daydream Mode forever. “But I can’t just _not_ listen to the other Sides. I can’t be without them, either.”

“I see.” Beneath his furrowed brows, Roman’s eyes are shining far more than usual.

Thomas shakes his head, gripping Roman’s fingers between his own. “You don’t- I’m sorry. I meant, they’re all my Sides. They’re all part of me. I need to listen to them. But I swear, I’ll do everything I can to follow my dreams, Roman; to follow _you_.”

He can’t tell if he stepped forwards first, or if Roman did, but he’s in his Prince’s arms, with his hair being brushed out of his face so tenderly that Thomas isn’t sure if he can hold himself upright anymore.

“Do you promise, dearest Thomas?” Roman asks.

“Of course.”

And Thomas means that, just as much as he means to wind his fingers into Roman’s hair, and to close his eyes, and feel their lips brush against each other. The chasteness of their kiss does not diminish the passion. How could it, when Roman is every ounce of ardour that Thomas knows he has?

When their lips disconnect, they spend a moment resting their foreheads against each other, revelling in the simple contact of skin against skin. Thomas’s eyes flutter open to find Roman already watching him. His eyes are wide; brown flecked with gold, like tiger’s eye set into his skull. It takes all that Thomas has to not kiss Roman again.

“I’ll see you tonight,” he murmurs instead, and pulls away reluctantly.

And, as Roman sinks out, Thomas adds something else.

“You’re my hero.”

As for the events of that night, well.

Thomas and Roman are allowed to keep _some_ of their secrets.

* * *

Anxiety leans in on his desk at the debate when Thomas asks for his name, and says “No.”

He’s succinct about it. His smirk is given under dark, lidded eyes. He could pin Thomas against a wall, and Thomas would thank him.

And Logan! Gosh, Logan’s doing his best to understand slang and such, which is another of those things that doesn’t make complete sense, what with him being _a literal part of Thomas_, who _does_ know those words. But he’s doing his best, and he calmly dismantles Anxiety’s cong-nitis dis-portions. Haagen-Dazs dispersions. Cognitive distortions. _There_.

Well, he’s usually calm. There’s a few moments of yelling, though those _are_ instigated by Anxiety. But the way that Logan adjusts his glasses and his tie… The stark contrast of his black polo against his skin…

Roman doesn’t judge him, in his dreams. He just holds him a little bit tighter.

* * *

There isn’t a precise moment when Thomas realises that he’s developed a crush on his Morality, or, well, _Patton_, but there is _definitely_ a moment where he realises that he’s in love. So, in that way, Thomas guesses, Patton’s kind of the reverse of Roman.

They’ve been becoming closer, because, no matter how much he loves his hopes and dreams, Thomas can’t stop himself from appreciating the here and now. He swore to follow Roman’s plans anywhere, but he’s been spending less time in his apartment, and even less time with his friends. He just wants to see them all smile, and to sing along to Disney movies with him, and just let themselves be silly. He wants to be able to have deep conversations in that space of time between late night and early morning with someone who _isn’t_ a figment of his own imagination.

And, well, he loves how kind Patton is to Anxiety. He loves that Patton does his best to not refer to himself as Thomas’s dad, because that felt _really_ weird. At least it’s nice to know _why_ exactly it felt so weird, right?

On some level, Thomas kind of wishes that Roman had never suggested shapeshifting to look and sound like his friends. He knows Roman’s heart was in the right place, because it always is, but it had somehow allowed Patton to wander wherever he pleased. What pleased Patton turned out to be leaving his part of the living room to go and hug Thomas.

“I love you!” he’d said as he’d returned to his normal spot.

And, well.

It might not have hurt so much if his eyes had not flickered to see Roman. As Valerie, his princely attire was hanging off of him. He looked like the first time that Thomas had first truly _seen_ him.

And then Thomas looked at Patton, wearing the face of one of his best friends, which, honestly, made it a little more awkward, and replied, “I love you, too.”

He knows the importance of the weight of words. Before, he’s carefully chosen what to say, while watching Roman for the slightest sign of distress. He’s been able to waste pretty words in meaningless sweetness, and he’s been able to make promises as solid as stone.

He hadn’t realised how meaningful those four words were until he’s said them out loud. Before he’d said them, Thomas hadn’t realised how he meant them, or how much he meant them, until he saw Roman’s face fall.

Of course, Roman could school his expressions better than Thomas himself could, due to his creativity being unlimited, but it was still there, for a second. A second of shared eye contact, and the stomach-dropping feeling of telling the truth.

Thomas avoids his dreams that night. He stays awake on the sofa, binge-watching Avatar: The Last Airbender with Patton. Patton; the core of Thomas’s happy feelings. How could he not love him? How could he not love hours spent indulging in movies or food or instant gratification?

Patton, who loves love, and who hates being selfish. Patton, who always does his best to make everyone happy. But how can everyone be happy if Thomas, just by picking a Side, can make the rest of him so sad? How are any of them supposed to be happy when Thomas is fucking around with himself, in his own mind?

Thomas is being selfish and cruel, and not even to other people. He’s hurting himself, because he was being so desperate for any kind of love that he fell for himself. _Twice_.

By the time that Zuko’s ship has been blown up, Thomas has drifted to sleep, while Patton slips down and sinks out.

* * *

“We can’t do this,” Thomas tells Roman, under the stars in the clearing where they’d spent hours together, kissing and talking and… _Everything_.

Roman’s hand freezes where it was caressing Thomas’s cheek with soft strokes of his thumb.

“What do you mean?” he asks, with a kind of vacant smile. Thomas isn’t sure if he should be grateful or not that Roman is making no attempt to hide the terror in his eyes.

“I can’t keep pulling you around like this, Roman,” Thomas says.

He tries to look into Roman’s eyes, but in the dim starlight, those rosewood irises seem as dark as the shadows in the trees.

“Seriously, Thomas,” Roman laughs half-heartedly. “I don’t understand.”

How the hell is he meant to say this? Roman is a part of him. There’s no guidelines to splitting up with your significant other when there’s no ‘other’. It’s just Thomas, looking at a stylised caricature of himself, and wondering how long ago it was when his feelings changed.

It turns out that the way to split up with yourself is the same way that you split up with anyone.

“We need to break up.”

Is this how _he_ felt? Looking at wide, dark eyes under a head covered in matching brown hair? Realising that he had to break his lover’s heart, so that their relationship couldn’t take them down with itself?

All this imaginary love hadn’t helped. These months spent curling up with Roman, filming more and more videos, hasn’t cured the problem. Thomas isn’t sure what the problem is, anymore, but he knows that, sometimes, when he looks at Roman, and Patton, and the other Sides, sometimes his chest gets _so tight_, and his heart _pounds_, and it _hurts_.

Roman’s eyes are wider, and his plastic smile has become stiffer.

“What?”

Thomas takes Roman’s hand away from his face, and intertwines their fingers. It feels so natural to hold Roman’s hand in this intimate way, palm-to-palm, linked like a chain.

He says, “I’ve been messing around with you, Roman. This thing, it wasn’t supposed to be serious. You’re, like, a quarter of my personality. But you love me so much that I just… I can’t feel the same, you know?”

“You don’t need to feel the same, though!” Roman’s smile is so big that Thomas can’t tell if it’s still fake anymore. “I don’t need your whole heart, Thomas. I just need you to accept mine.”

Is this how desperate Thomas was for that boy? Enough that he’d give his heart for nothing in return? No wonder he got dumped, if this is anything like what that felt like. Roman’s two hands enveloping Thomas’s makes it feel like he’s holding his hand in a fire without getting burnt.

“There’s nothing that I can do to stop you from feeling that way, is there?” Thomas asks softly.

Roman shakes his head. “You’re everything to me, Thomas.”

“But I’ve got to live in the real world,” he says. “I’ve got to fall in love with a real-life guy, not just a figment of my imagination.”

After a long moment, where Roman’s face flickers through a variety of emotions that Thomas still can’t identify, no matter how much he wants to, Roman smiles.

It’s not the false one from before. It’s soft; close-lipped and sad.

Thomas can feel his heart break inside his chest. He doesn’t need to check to know that it’s metaphorical, this time.

“I understand.”

Roman’s grand voice is gentle, in that way that it always is – _was_ – after they had both exhausted themselves to the point where all they could do would be to wrap their bodies around each other like they could fuse into one being; one with the same beating heart, and the same set of lungs, breathing and beating in an embrace that never had to end.

“I thought you wanted Patton, and I… I don’t know if I could deal with you picking him over me, no matter how much I love him, too. I’d understand, but I don’t know if I would have been able to accept it.” Roman says. “But I should have known in the first place that this couldn’t last. You need real love, from a real person.” A bitter laugh interrupts his final sentence. “I guess some things are beyond your wildest dreams, after all.”

Thomas can’t remember their first kiss. Maybe it had been at the top of a wizard’s tower, or as they rode together on horseback. Maybe it was when Roman had put himself to sleep in a glass coffin, just so that Thomas could wake him like Snow White. Maybe it was long before then, when Thomas was a child, and the Prince pretended that he wasn’t enjoying the true-love-kiss when he pretended to be the princess.

Their last kiss, though, is printed in Thomas’s mind like the raised letters on a book cover. Dark, and bittersweet, and flavoured with the salt of someone’s tears.


	2. in which guys are considered, and so are dolls

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warning for this chapter bc i start doing a bit of discussion as to whether or not clones are identical twins, and, therefore, if kissing a clone is akin to kissing your twin, and also if that even counts, because they're not multiple individuals who share dna, but various schemata of one individual who only has his own dna

It’s not as if Roman had been particularly subtle about it. _“No matter how much I love him, too,”_ he’d said.

And, well, he’d said some other things, too. It had been a few nights later, after he gave Thomas the same kind of dreams he’d had before they were overtaken by making out with himself.

Things like, _“Don’t worry; I’m your passionate side, remember? I just tend to get a little bit carried away, is all.”_

And, _“You’re right; it wasn’t really love, after all.”_

And while the words didn’t ring false to Thomas, and he believed them wholly, it still kind of hurt to see Roman’s tender smile turned on Patton, and to see Patton look at Logan like he hung the stars in the sky.

It hurts even more when, after all is said and done, and Anxiety is Virgil, Thomas can pinpoint the moment that Roman falls for Virgil, and it’s when he says, _“You saved me.”_

It’s the exact same tone that he said those exact same words to Thomas with, just a couple of months ago.

They’d been racing through neon city streets; blue streaks reflecting off the shining blacks of the roads as they chased a robber who had stolen whatever thingamajig they needed that time around. It turned out the robber was part of a smuggling ring, and the robber was just luring Thomas and Roman to their hideout. Thomas had gotten away, but Roman stayed trapped, until Thomas had accessed the full powers of his imagination to stage a huge rescue that included figments shaped like the other Sides and Joan.

Thomas had held Roman bridal-style, and Roman had smiled, clinging to the front of Thomas’s vinyl jacket.

_“You saved me,”_ he’d said, relieved and proud and so full of love that Thomas had kissed him, again, right then.

Thomas doesn’t kiss Roman anymore; not even in his dreams. He doesn’t stay asleep for any longer than he has to. Logan starts lecturing for him to go to bed earlier, if he’s going to fix his circadian rhythm, but still expresses a weird amount of pride that Thomas is waking up according to some theoretical schedule that Logan has all planned out somewhere.

They’re supportive of him, even now. When Talyn comes over to help Thomas dye his hair, Roman and Patton are cheering them on. When Thomas goes out in Prince-approved outfits fit for seduction, Logan takes Virgil aside to go through cognitive distortions and calming, logical thoughts.

When Thomas scores a date, Roman is thrilled.

Thomas wishes he’d be jealous, instead.

* * *

The date doesn’t go too well. Neither does the next. All Thomas can think of when he hangs out with these cute guys is that they’re too tall, or too short, or too pale or too dark. Their eyes look so different from Thomas’s own. One of them wears eyeliner, but he’s good at it, and it arches along his eyelid like a perfect piece of calligraphy. It’s not smudged and dark under his eyes, hiding bruises from a lack of sleep. One of them laughs it off when he gets something wrong, and doesn’t seem to care about being completely right all of the time.

One of them doesn’t like dogs. That’s pretty much an immediate dealbreaker.

But, seriously, how conceited, how narcissistic is it of Thomas to reject partners for not being exactly like a part of himself? How vain can he get? He should just level with himself and kiss the mirror; he should strip naked against the glass and pretend. He should go crawling back to Roman, even though Thomas can see how Roman looks at Virgil, and at Patton, and at Logan, and not at Thomas. Not anymore.

He hears Roman make suggestions for romantic gestures, and reading over old fantasies like a well-loved bedtime story. Thing is, Thomas knows that story by heart by now, and he’s grown to hate the ending.

He should beg like a dog for forgiveness, but if there’s anything more pathetic than trying to date yourself, it would be trying to get yourself to take you back. It’s not even the normal way that websites aimed at women Thomas’s age say you should _‘date yourself’_, like going to see a movie or eating out alone. No, this is the idea of literally dating every personified Side of your personality.

Why can’t he just date actual, _real-life_ men? Men like-

Him.

So, _maybe_, he starts daydreaming about Guys and Dolls again. _Maybe_ he moves his body through the dance routines, and _maybe_ he listens to sad songs about heartbreak in between viewings of the movie adaptation from the fifties.

Then again, he knows that he can’t hide from himself, because Logan’s been lecturing him on how this moping has no purpose. _Maybe_ his recent feelings might have been becoming a problem, and _maybe_ he’s kidding himself on that ‘maybe’, because it’s kind of definite.

He’s stopped getting crushes on anyone who’ll look his way twice, and started only getting them on the people most unattainable to him.

* * *

First thing in the morning – _‘morning’_ being a subjective term, though, still, technically, accurate, since it’s five minutes until midday – Thomas showers quickly, in a vague effort to wake himself up a little, then traipses downstairs to set up the camera. Even though clean clothes are supposed to make you feel better after spending a few days crying in your pyjamas, Thomas still kind of feels like shit.

Virgil pops up first, because of course he does. He comes in on a wave of fear that has Thomas looking over his shoulder for a second to make sure that the stove is still turned off, since he hasn’t really touched it in a week. But then the fear recedes, and there’s a kind of momentary comfort, because it’s nothing scary. It’s just Thomas’s friend, Virgil, who is incidentally a part of Thomas’s existence, and also incredibly attractive, even though he literally just looks like Thomas in a different outfit.

The worst part is that Virgil, after the two of them have a short but confusing discussion about statements, both redundant and initial, is _kind_. He tells Thomas that he, personally, has not been experiencing any issues impairing or enhancing his function as Anxiety. He gets Thomas to open up, in his usual faux-aggressive way, and when Thomas mentions _Guys and Dolls_, he-

“Oh, _shit_,” groans Virgil, inhaling through his teeth. He calls out for everyone else to help, because he knows that he’s out of his depth, and Thomas can’t figure out if it’s condescending of him to be proud of Virgil about that.

“Are we still having this problem?” asks Logan, the only one of Thomas’s Sides to have risen up. “Thomas, it has been _months_. It’s time to move on. I feel like-” Logan barks out a laugh. “Look at me; _“feel like.”_ Nevertheless, I feel as if I have run out of productive things to say on the matter. I’m just- Frustrated.”

As if summoned by a pun opportunity, Patton rises from the depths of Thomas’s floorboards. “Hi, Frustrated; I’m sad. I mean, Dad. Whoop!”

Thomas decides to not follow the thought that suggests why he was so uncomfortable with Patton calling himself his dad. Regardless, his brain generates the thought of Patton holding himself above Thomas with one hand, while the other cups Thomas’s face so he can lean in and-

“Patton, are you…” Logan’s face draws up in deep concern. “Are you _still_ wearing that cat onesie?”

Thomas lets Patton make his jokes, and he lets Logan become frustrated because he’s refusing to try understanding. No, that’s bitter, and mean. Logan is part of Thomas, and he’s great, and Thomas really likes him. But he has some tendencies and flaws, just like Thomas does, and-

“I’ve got it!” Roman rises up with some kind of desperate fanfare. “Thomas, you write down all of your thoughts and feelings in an eloquent letter, and deliver it to him in a basketful of his favourite things.”

And Thomas starts thinking about that, instead, because when he was with _him_, he wasn’t pining over figments of his imagination. He thinks of the loves that they shared, of theatre and Disney and eating pizza in the middle of the night, and he thinks of the things that he only loved because his boyfriend loved them, like sports, and obscure surreal horror movies.

Virgil protests Roman’s suggestion, and Logan says something about how it’s creepy, or whatever. Roman, meanwhile, claims that he was _“Joking! It’s just a joke!”_

It’s not a joke. They all know that. Nobody points it out, but that doesn’t change the fact. All of them _do_ know.

“You just don’t understand how Thomas experiences love,” Roman says.

“I understand that it’s making you act pathetic,” Logan responds, as sharp and cold as a knife.

Patton tries to distract them. Virgil tries to corral them. Roman suggests straight-up calling his ex.

“Thomas, why are you still feeling so dejected over events that transpired months ago?” Logan asks.

Thomas slumps at that. How’s he meant to explain his feelings? That he’s clinging onto a past love, not only because he still loves him, but because it’s the only distraction from lusting pathetically after his own metaphysical personality?

He tells them vague things, about how love doesn’t fade away so quickly. He can’t bring himself to look at any of them, in fear that he’ll make more unfortunate realisations. Roman brings up recapturing lost feelings, Logan brings up nostalgia, and Thomas suggests visiting Patton’s room.

It’s selfish. It’s disgusting and selfish, that Thomas wants to know more about Patton, and wants to feel surrounded by the feeling of him. It’s like a con, the way he brings up how Patton’s room must be nostalgia heaven, instead of how it could just be full of all the emotions he doesn’t want to confront, and the somehow unconflicting feelings of excitement and calm that Patton brings.

Virgil seems nervous. Thomas knows why.

* * *

As soon as he rises up in Patton’s room, Thomas immediately feels better. There’s a veneer of shininess on everything, and even the air seems rose-tinted. It’s fuzzy, in the way that mass-developed photographs are, and like how the world gets when you’re drunk on wine at three in the morning, wishing you were a better person.

No, this is the time for looking at videos from when he was a kid – _kiddeos_! Ha! Now’s the time for reading his old stories, and the middle-school poetry collaborations between Roman and Virgil that the three of them would rather just forget! Now’s the time to ignore the bad things, and focus on the shows and accolades, and imagined electrocutions of brothers, and-

Love.

There’s a scrapbook that Thomas picks out, because it seems a little misplaced, in that way where props in hand-animated movies stand out against the painted backgrounds. Just like those things, this book is untouched by the fuzzy nostalgia of the room.

It’s new, he thinks. New in a way nothing else is.

There is no picture of him when he opens it. Instead, the first page of the scrapbook has a Polaroid photo pasted in, of all four of his Sides. It seems like it was taken by an outsider, but something in Thomas lets him know that it’s a memory, pure and simple. It feels just like all of the room does, but more intense.

In the picture, Roman is kissing Logan, and Patton is kissing Virgil. There’s no tongue. They’re being chaste, but there’s nothing platonic about the intimacy in the image. Logan’s hands are intertwined with Virgil’s, and Patton’s with Roman’s, and if Thomas could die of a broken heart, he would do that immediately.

The room’s fallen silent, and Thomas can’t bring himself to look up at his Sides.

There’s little words written in a loopier, rounder version of Thomas’s usual scrawl, and he just knows that that handwriting belongs to Patton. The exclamation marks and doodled hearts work their ways around stickers of space and animals and little Disney Tsum Tsums.

He turns a page, just so he doesn’t have to see that photograph anymore, and is instead faced with more Polaroids. These are of Roman, Virgil, and Logan, all individually, or as individually as portraits can get when the subjects are all tangled up together, cuddling in the same bed. Thomas’s only reprieve is that they’re all wearing pyjama tops, and their skin is unmarred by the purple marks that he knows Roman delights in.

But… They all look so content. Roman’s smiling, and it’s genuine in a way that Thomas has only really seen in his dreams before. Virgil’s makeup is smudged down his cheeks, but the smears indicate that someone’s wiped away his tears.

Logan looks so soft and happy, in a way that Thomas didn’t even know he _could_ look. His fingers are interlocked with another’s – probably Roman’s, if the positioning of the photos is anything to go by – and pressed against his parted lips.

Did Roman cherish that feeling, of Logan’s warm breath against his knuckles, and the slight dampness of Logan’s saliva, still on his lips, sticking to his fingers?

Of course he does. Roman’s not stupid. Not Like Thomas is.

The four of them will be happy like this, without Thomas there to ruin it, like how he ruins everything. Maybe he’ll be a better person, somehow, with his Sides loving each other and not doing their level best to make him feel comfortable above all else.

He raises his head with a smile, finding himself in his own living room again.

“So, you’re all together?” he asks.

He can act. He’s acted like his heart isn’t breaking for so long, now. This is nothing new.

“It’s… New,” Virgil murmurs.

“We were going to tell you, kiddo, I promise!” says Patton. “It’s just, as Virgil said, it’s new.”

“Less than twenty-four hours, and you already have a scrapbook dedicated to our relationship?” asks Logan, adjusting his tie. “Patton, that’s…” He glances down, and his lips quirk up in what is possibly the cutest smile that Thomas has ever had the privilege of seeing. “That’s adorable, quite frankly.”

Roman doesn’t say anything. There’s just a moment where he and Thomas look each other in the eye, and a wordless conversation occurs.

There are no apologies. Thomas isn’t sure who _would_ be apologising, to be honest, but it kind of feels like an _“I’m sorry,”_ should be said by someone, at least.

“Is this okay?” Patton asks. “The four of us?”

Thomas laughs a little bit. “You’re Morality, Patton. You tell me.”

Patton presses his index fingers together, perpendicularly. “It… It’s nice, to be with the three of you, but I don’t know if it’s _right_. I thought I was a kind of kindly father figure, but I don’t want to be the Dad Guy with you.”

“And also, are we technically related?” adds Virgil. “’Cause, like, I think I speak for all of us when I say that incest would _kind of_ put a dampener on this whole. Relationship. Thing.”

Thomas’s face twists up, because, _eurgh_. Looking around, everyone else has had the same reaction.

“We all share a hundred percent of the same DNA, much like identical twins,” says Logan.

That’s… Not entirely helpful.

“However,” he continues, “we all share that DNA because we are the same person, and not two or more different people who have developed from the same ovum.”

Patton squints across the room at him. “Yeah, does that make it better or worse?”

“Being the same person?” asks Logan. At Patton’s nod, he says, “I’m not sure, to be honest. However, as our Prince has said before, self-love is, indeed, very important, and very… Ah, _special_.”

Patton and Roman both make noises as if they’ve been presented with bouquets of puppy plushies. Even Virgil’s lips quirk up, and he reaches his hand gently out to his left. Logan reaches back, and their fingertips brush.

Does it feel like static electricity between them? Building up and bursting into sparks of love?

Thomas tries not to let self-loathing stab through his gut at that, but he definitely fails.


	3. the christmas episode (seasonal repression)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *snekkey boy intensifies* *jingling bell intensifies* *content warning for brief alcohol and intoxicated kissing references*

It would have been nice, Thomas thinks, to fall in love with Joan and Talyn.

Never separately, he swears! Gosh, he can’t really imagine either of them not in love with the other. But, when they have those moments together, the ones that they don’t intend to have, where they look at each other and suddenly seem different, somehow, Thomas can’t help but wish he was part of something like that.

They’re all friends, first and foremost, and he knows that he adds a certain something to the platonic aspects of the friendship, but they don’t need him for their _relationship_ to truly work. So, he lies on the fringes, as the face of their income, and as their best friend.

If he wasn’t only into guys, he’d have fallen for Talyn, with their gentle hands and brave determination, and Joan, who connected with him so quickly that the both of them barely experienced that awkward stage of acquaintanceship, long ago. Thing is, he is, and his relationship status at the time means that he only ever would be friends with them.

Plus, it just wouldn’t be fair, to try and imagine forcing himself into their relationship. He knows that he’s not in love with them, and that he’s satisfied with being their friend. He’s not thinking of intruding in their relationship, either. He just keeps on thinking about how nice it would be, if he wasn’t stuck with the crushing weight of crushing on pretend people in his head.

Well, they’re not pretend; not fully. Joan and Talyn have met the Sides, and occasionally conversed with one of them on the phone, under the mistaken understanding that they were talking to the actual, entire Thomas. Joan still calls Thomas’s discussions with the Sides “_Standing in the living room and talking to yourself_,” which is fair enough, really, because that’s a pretty literal description of what happens.

So, it would have been nice to fall in love with Joan and Talyn, Thomas thinks, because he loves them both. The thing is, he just doesn’t love them like _that_.

Like how he loves himself.

* * *

The next four months are spent in a kind of dizzying state. When he looks at himself in the mirror, he doesn’t think of himself as unattractive, ever. Maybe he’s breaking out a bit on his forehead from stress, but that’s okay! It’s normal, and he’s still cute, no matter what. Patton’s probably going to go on his tiptoes, and tilt Thomas’s head down, and shower kisses on those spots-

Oh. He won’t.

On Christmas Eve, before he drives up to spend time with his family, he needs a little (a lot) of time to himself in his apartment (to nap).

After singing a little song to himself (and the camera), he flops on the couch with some of his favourite soft blankets, ready to snooze off into dreamland with the trio of pretend boyfriends that Roman’s currently tormenting him with – albeit unintentionally; Thomas doesn’t think that Roman _can_ hold anything against him and he doesn’t know if it’s good or bad if that makes him want him more.

Then, as if summoned by the thought of him, a voice whispers:

“Hey, Thomas.”

“Yay hey, Thomas!”

Wow. That’s weirdly comforting, for Patton to show up, too, and also kind of cruel, you know, regarding the emotions that Thomas has been trying to box up and shove to the side. Ha! _Side_. Sanders Sides.

Yeah, that really wasn’t his best.

“Yeah?” he asks, already sleep-mumbling.

“Tom.”

“Thomathy.”

He squints his eyes open. “What is it?”

“Tommy salami.”

“Tomma-lomma-ding-dong!”

“Thomas the _Dank_ Engine!”

Thomas pushes himself into a sitting position, because maybe, if he listens to their demand, they won't get more creative with the nicknames. “_What_?”

They tell him, in a mix of Roman’s demandingly-toned requests and Patton’s gentleness, that-

“I wanna make a Sanders Sides video!” Roman exclaims, when Thomas still doesn’t move.

With Patton’s cheer of agreement, Thomas lets himself smile and obey Roman. He couldn’t have ever _actually_ turned him down; he couldn’t turn _any_ of his Sides down. At least, not knowingly. So he slides off of the couch and onto his feet, and he walks to the centre of his living room.

“Welp,” he says, with a little shrug-like gesture, before switching to his usual jazz-hands peek-a-boo introduction, for a, “What is up everybody?”

Roman cheers.

“It’s been, like, fifty-_ever_!” Patton beams.

Virgil shows up with a swoop of Thomas’s stomach, like the drop on a rollercoaster. “It really _has_ been.”

“It’s been two months, Virgil, and I’m doing it now.” Thomas scrunches his eyelids shut, but that just makes him see the last video in his mind’s eye. The photo album, which he _knows_ that Patton keeps adding to, invades so many of his thoughts. He has to look directly at Virgil, and his heavy, dark eyes.

“Do you know how long it’s been?”

“Two months, Virgil,” groans Thomas. “I get it, I really do, but can you just stop with the pressure?”

Virgil squints at him, leaning forwards on his elbows a little. “Is that a rhetorical question? Because, like… I’m your Anxiety, remember?”

For a second, Thomas wants to respond with something like, _“No, you’re my Virgil,”_ but that could be misconstrued. Maybe. Does it count as ‘misconstruing’ if you imply romantic interest when only one person harbours any such feelings?

“And it is a particular time of the year,” says Logan, rising up with a flick of his hair. Why does he look so effortlessly cool? Thomas thought that Logan was supposed to be a nerd!

He can’t really think; he’s too busy replaying that singular little hair swish in his head. “Cold… Time?”

Logan adjusts his glasses to perfectly emphasise his eyebrow raise. “Thomas, you live in Florida. Try again.”

He doesn’t know. The time when that soup commercial is on, the one with the little kid who’s also a snowman, for some reason? But, no, that’s alienating the non-US viewers of his videos.

“_Christmas_, Thomas!” Logan eventually huffs in loud exasperation. “It’s Christmastime.”

Thomas raises his hands. “And that alienates our viewers who don’t celebrate Christmas! There’s no winning here!”

“It’s just like they always say,” Roman muses. “’_There’s no winning on Christmas_.’”

Thomas blinks. So does Virgil.

“Nobody says that,” says Logan, “to my knowledge, at least.”

“Yeah, that’s not a saying,” Thomas adds.

Roman glares with a pout so playful that it makes Thomas’s heart skip a beat. “That’s what _you_ think.”

Logan claps his hands twice, and everyone turns to look at him. His smile turns self-satisfactory.

He’s gorgeous when he smiles like that.

“Would it not be prudent, then, Thomas, to create a seasonally-appropriate video?” asks Logan.

Roman makes a noise of discontent until the attention has returned to him.

“That’s what I’ve been trying to get at!” he whines. Then, with a smile as bright as always, he adds, “Patton and I have been working on these!”

With a snap of his fingers, his usual costume is gone, to be replaced by a knitted jumper clearly designed after it over a pair of skinny black jeans that Thomas only wears when he’s feeling extra-confident. Then, with a double-pun, Patton’s outfit is also transformed to a similar sweater, only his is patterned with cats and dogs.

He’s also wearing one of those mistletoe headbands. Go figure.

When Logan accepts that he will also be sweater-ed, he honestly looks about as delighted as Thomas thinks he’s ever looked. It’s designed after the De Stijl art movement, which Patton makes another pun out of, but Logan gets a good little ramble about that particular interest before Virgil is gifted with his jumper.

Thomas, honestly, can’t help but shiver with a thrill of pride that runs through him. Roman and Patton have worked together so hard, and, judging by the honest satisfaction from the less fanciful Sides, it’s paid off excellently. Everyone’s sweaters coincide with how they present and view themselves, but also with little hints of the parts of their personalities that they hide away out of fear or shame.

His Sides know each other so deeply; so intimately. They must know him better than he knows himself.

He lets himself gush over them, then, “My turn!” he exclaims, before he can doubt himself. “Sweater me up!”

Patton’s face draws up in that way that Thomas hates, because it means that both of them are going to feel pretty sad, and he exchanges a look with Roman.

“Well, Thomas…” Patton starts.

Roman finishes that sentence. “…We can’t really do that.”

And, yeah, Thomas understands as soon as they say it, but they explain anyway.

“You know, we’re imaginary…”

“…And you’re not…”

“…So it kind of makes it, you know.”

“Impossible.”

Does he really need a reminder, every five minutes, as to why his pining is hopeless and stupid?

Yes. Yes he does.

“Yeah, we’ve done all the Christmas stuff,” Virgil says in a quick monotone. “Can I go to my room now?”

No, he can’t. Now that he has all four of his Sides in the room, he kind of doesn’t want to see them go. He wants them to stay, so he can bask in their – his own; how vain is _that_? – company.

Luckily, Roman has composed a carol for all of the sides to sing. Well, he’s rewritten _The Twelve Days of Christmas_ to be about them. His four Sides. Their perfect harmony, even though it doesn’t quite translate to Thomas feeling balanced and happy in himself. But they’re not to blame for that part. No, that’s all on Thomas.

Roman pauses the music when Virgil has a question about his one line, and the four of them workshop it without Thomas’s input. Well, they’re _all_ his input, technically, and he’s workshopping it by himself, but that’s beside the point.

_“A love that all four of us share,”_ though, is kind of… Thomas is just glad that that Roman, Patton, and Logan are too distracted by how Virgil blushes scarlet as he mutters out that line, only half in-tune.

And, yes, they weren’t perfect, because nothing about Thomas is. They had bickered and snarked and joked their way through, and Patton had kept interrupting them with his plastic mistletoe kisses.

It was almost painfully cute.

“Thomas, you don’t look…” Patton says, when the four sides are back in their normal places in the living room. “You don’t look very happy.”

All of their eyes staring at him are a heavy weight on Thomas. Metaphorically, of course, since the perception of being visually regarded isn’t really measurable in any way Thomas is aware of. That doesn’t matter, though, because he can still feel it, and it makes his gut squirm.

“What do you mean?” he asks, pasting his best smile onto his face.

He’s met with four near-identical sceptical looks.

“That really isn’t convincing us,” states Logan.

“Yeah, you’re gonna need to do a bit better than that,” says Virgil. “We kind of did that whole thing with Patton when we got together. You need to talk about your negative emotions.”

“What Virgil _means_,” Patton interrupts, looking at Thomas with a kind of gentleness that would be demeaning if it wasn’t exactly what he wanted, “is that, if you feel comfortable, we can talk about your feelings and work them out in a healthy way.”

Thomas shakes his head rapidly, and says, with complete honestly, “Nothing’s wrong!”

“Nobody said that anything _was_ wrong.” Logan pushes up his glasses. “We just noticed that you don’t seem, figuratively, at _a hundred percent_.”

“I’m fine,” he replies, far too quickly.

His gritted teeth bared, Virgil tilts his head and raises an eyebrow. “Yeah, I’m not really sold on that.”

Thomas runs a hand through his hair. “Seriously, guys, I’m fine. Roman, your song was great. I’m proud of you.”

Roman cringes away at those words. Maybe Thomas is just too tired to sound sincere. It doesn’t stop his hand from twitching, to go and cup Roman’s cheek, and just exchange the word _‘hey’_ with him, over and over, until they’re both smiling and kissing each other through little giggles.

But he can’t do that anymore. He gave that up when he gave up Roman. Now Roman has three other boyfriends, who don’t have a ridiculous power imbalance with him. They can love him better than Thomas ever could.

“You can’t _deflect_ with some kind of appeal to my vanity!” Roman exclaims, but quickly adds, “Though I certainly do appreciate the compliment. Thank you, Thomas.”

Thomas sends a little finger-gun Roman’s way. “You’re welcome.”

“This is exactly what happened with Patton,” Virgil sighs.

Logan nods slightly, saying, “But we were newly dating Patton at the time, and we’re not dating Thomas, seeing as we’re simply anthropomorphic sides of his personality, and thus, maintaining a romantic relationship with him would be patently ridiculous.”

Thomas winces at that. Then he glances at Roman, who looks away far too quickly after they make eye contact. And that’s fine. That’s completely fine. So he looks away, just to see Virgil’s eyes flickering between the two of them and his face dawning with realisation.

Can he sink out to deal with his awkward humiliation by himself, and just leave the Sides to cuddle and kiss or whatever it is that they do?

“Thomas, you need to talk to us,” says Patton, so gently that it feels like he’s sticking a knife in Thomas’s stomach. “I really think that something’s wrong, and I want to help fix it.”

“I said it before; _nothing’s wrong_,” Thomas avers.

“You’re _lying_.”

Virgil doesn’t say that as much as he bites out the words, with a venomous tone that threatens to echo and reverberate over itself.

“Is he?” Patton’s mouth falls open to form a little worried circle. “Thomas, you _know_ that lying is wrong!”

“I do, Patton. Thanks,” says Thomas. “Which is why I’m _not_ lying.”

“You’re saying that you’re okay, and that nothing’s wrong, but that’s _not true_, and you _know_ it.” Virgil speaks in the same tone as he did before. His agitation threatens to spill over into anger, like how water boils over from pots in a simmering eruption. “Ergo, you’re lying.”

Logan nods. “He’s right. That is the definition of lying.”

“Maybe if Thomas _doesn’t_ want to talk about it, then we shouldn’t force him to.”

Thomas would say that he’s so grateful that he could kiss Roman at that, but doing that would probably make everything worse. No, it wouldn’t; it would _definitely_ make everything worse.

Virgil shakes his head. “But we need to! This is going to keep festering if we don’t.”

“Or _maybe_ it’ll just heal over, and it won’t _hurt_ as much, so I’ll be able to talk about it without so much _stress_, guys!” Thomas cries out, running a hand through his hair and yanking on the first tangle he finds.

Patton gasps. “It’s _hurting_ you? We need to sort it out, then!”

“_No_, Patton,” he growls, and, _wow_, he was not expecting to do _that_.

“_Yes_, Patton!” Patton responds, just as full of firm concern as always. It makes Thomas want to curl up against his chest and be _held_ and _protected_, because Patton is _safe_; he always _has_ been.

“We have, historically, only really been able to solve your issues after they have been vocalised, Thomas,” says Logan.

“And it seems that he’s not going to do any vocalising, so I’m gonna go ahead and do it,” replies Virgil, watching Thomas’s flinch, then hardening his stare.

He takes a deep breath, opens his mouth, and-

Slaps his hand over it.

Virgil’s eyes fill with white-hot fury. He seems to try and pull his hand away, but it’s like his fingers are stuck to his face. When he tugs at his wrist, his knuckles just pale and his fingers press down harder.

When Patton speaks, his voice is small. “Oh dear.”

All the anger and defensiveness falls away when Thomas sees Virgil’s umber eyes wide with sheer panic.

“Virgil!” he finds himself crying, before looking around at the other Sides, all of whom seem to be in various stages of understanding and realisation. “What’s wrong? What’s happening?”

And, okay, maybe that one question _is_ a little ironic, but, _come on_. Virgil’s hand is _stuck_ on his face. This hasn’t ever happened before. His Sides are all exchanging significant looks that Thomas still can’t decipher.

“Roman, please,” Thomas begs, and maybe it’s a little cruel of him, because he knows that Roman can’t deny him anything, but he _needs to know_. “Please, Roman, I don’t know what’s happening.”

He doesn’t mean to blink away a tear. He doesn’t mean to be manipulative, and he doesn’t mean to be sincere. He just…

He just wants to feel safe again.

He doesn’t fully know the words that he’s choosing; just that he can see his Prince and that his Prince can fix everything.

“Help me, Princey.”

Roman makes a half-aborted gesture to take Thomas’s hand, or grasp his shoulder, or something, but then his hand curls into a loose fist and rests against his sash.

“Do you remember when we broke into Virgil’s room and apologised to him, and then he told us all his name?” Princey asks, in a kind of nervously meandering tone.

Well, yes. Thomas and Roman were both pretty torn-up over the breakup, still. It was kind of awkward.

Instead of saying that, though, Thomas says, “Yeah?”

Roman pokes his index fingers against each other. “And, then, I said something like how he _‘wasn’t scary at all when compared to the others’_?”

Thomas nods, and repeats, a little more impatiently, this time: “_Yeah_?”

Wordlessly, Roman gestures to Virgil, who finally manages to tear the hand from his face.

“I was going to say that it wasn’t that important, anyway, but I guess it _is_, now,” growls Virgil.

“Are you okay?” Thomas asks him without thinking about it.

Virgil huffs through his nose. “I’ll be fine. Weren’t you, like, taking a nap, before Roman and Patton popped up? Because, like, you should engage is some avoidance and not think about this. You’re going to see your family tomorrow, and how will you explain the reason you’re a mess _this_ time without getting treated like you’re crazy?”

Thomas blinks, feeling a little bit like a goldfish, what with his mouth being agape and his mind being blank and everything.

“Go to sleep,” Virgil says. It’s a clear dismissal.

He and the others don’t sink out, though, as Thomas tries to zone out under his blankets again. Instead, they chatter while exchanging thoughtful gifts for each other. He’s being excluded from a relationship happening between figments of his own imagination, and he’s deeply sour about it, and he _also_ feels like shit for feeling so bitter about it, because his imaginary people are allowed to live their own lives, even if they’re just made up and they’ll defer to doing whatever Thomas forces them to, because _they’re all literally him_.

Wow. Putting it like that kind of makes it sound even more disgusting.

Thomas’s gut churns as his nose fills with the smell of Patton’s gift to Roman of spaghetti. Maybe he should have just gone to sleep in the first place.

* * *

On New Year’s, he gets pretty lucky, he guesses. Someone he’s never met before kisses him at a party when the clock strikes midnight. It’s pretty good. Sure, he tastes like soda and vodka, but Thomas himself probably tastes the same, so he can’t really judge him for that. It’s wet and sloppy, but their tongues flit against each other in a way that almost makes Thomas so weak-kneed that he loses his balance.

He doesn’t text the guy after, though, even with Roman encouraging him to. He just… Doesn’t want to. So he doesn’t.

And, yeah, that’s not exactly a healthy reaction, and it’s not what Thomas would have done before this whole fiasco. You know, the one where he suddenly saw Roman as something more than just his own personified Creativity, and instead as someone who could love him, and hold him, and caress his slightly-parted lips, red from kissing, with his thumb as they lay facing each other, losing themselves in the other’s eyes.

He doesn’t really speak to his Sides, much, either. Like, they’ll hang around him, doing their own thing, or they’ll join him in watching whatever it is he’s watching, but they don’t do the whole _solving his issues by standing in a circle and arguing_ thing anymore. It’s been a month, and all Thomas can think of when he sees Virgil is having his one secret from the others being revealed, and the Other forcing Virgil to silence himself.

It’s terrifying him twofold: one of his Sides proved that he’d betray Thomas for a shitty interpretation of ‘his own good’, and another side affected the others without even being physically present. He isn’t ready for all of these things to happen, and for him to learn so much about himself, in that he doesn’t actually know anything about himself, at all.

Logically, he _could_ force the other Side out. The Sides are all in his head, after all. They can’t disobey him if he really wants them to do something; Thomas knows that better than he wishes he did. He could just decide that he wants to know what the hell is hidden in his own brain, and he _tries_. He honestly _tries_ to _want_ to know. It’s just that, well, he actually _doesn’t_ want to, so it’s pretty useless.

Whatever parts of himself are hanging out in the back of his mind must know everything he wants to keep hidden, so he can really only hope that they’ll keep being nice to him like that.


	4. oh, heck; is that a snek?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happ birth deceit

For once, he gets invited out by a guy he gave his number to, who doesn’t immediately remind him of the facets of his personality that live in his brain and constantly argue and eat the last of his granola. The two of them – just two; not three or four or five – get along so well, and he feels like, _maybe_, they could _get along_ somewhere else, at some point. Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge.

However, the moment he looks away from the man’s eyes is the moment when he remembers, and his gut _sinks_.

Joan.

Joan wrote a play, and there’s a one-night-only reading for it, and it’s already started. Then again, he knows that they’d read it with him if they really wanted him to see, but that’s a pretty big event.

But the man’s eyes are so pretty, and his lips are so enticing. He asks if Thomas is free to keep the night going; for dinner, maybe, and Thomas says _“Yes,”_ because that’s what you _say_ when faced with an attractive man who smiles at you with dark, lidded eyes.

It’s not like he gets to enjoy the date (Is this a date? Does this count?) anyway, because Joan is just in the back of his mind. He’s missing out on Joan’s one-night-only (One-night-_Joan_-ly!) performance, for what? A chance to hang out with a near-stranger? He should be supporting his best friend, now, not getting seduced by a hot guy!

By now, it’s already so late, and it would just be silly to show up during the intermission. He wouldn’t know what had happened, or anything!

At the end of the evening, he gives the guy his phone number, and goes home alone, where he can mull over the feelings rolling through his stomach privately. Joan will understand why he didn’t show up.

Everything seemed a lot simpler in the dark, when Thomas barely felt like himself, and more like a stranger in his home; in his bed; in his body. That illusion of serenity was bound to break as the sun rose, like a fairy-tale gift or curse, and it broke with a simple text message.

* * *

_WHERE WERE U LAST NIGHT F WORD FACE??_

Patton gasps in a breath, covering his mouth with open fingers. He’s been being a bit sweeter than Thomas remembers; more sickly saccharine, kind of. Then again, Thomas hasn’t exactly been hanging out with him that much. This might be normal, and Thomas has just forgotten, because he’s being a huge dejected jerk who remembers all of his suppressed feelings whenever something nudges his thoughts slightly in that vague direction.

He hasn’t really been hanging out with any of his Sides since Christmas. Sometimes one of them will show up to steer him in a particular way more obviously than they usually would have, like when Logan reminds him to do taxes, or if Roman wants to talk through an idea, but they’ve mostly been leaving him alone like he’s leaving them to kiss or do whatever it is they do together.

Huh. What were they doing last night?

Well, apparently Virgil and Roman were arguing, and they don’t seem to have stopped, even while Thomas tries to express his feelings about how awful it would be to tell Joan the plain, honest truth; that he got invited on a date and got distracted.

“The only alternative to the truth,” Logan says, looking at Thomas with his usual face he pulls when he’s getting started on problem-solving, “is a fabrication, in order to ease their concerns.”

Thomas sees Virgil’s eyes narrow, and turns his eyes back to Logan. He almost doesn’t realise that he’s pushed his shoulders forwards, as if he can roll himself into a defensive ball like a little woodlouse.

He’s just in time to see Logan lean back, inhaling through his teeth. His expression now is something that Thomas can’t quite place. Is he judging Thomas, or merely reassessing what he knows about him? Is there a difference between the two? Why is the shift in his tone as he speaks making Thomas feel like this, and what _is_ this feeling, anyway?

“Ah. That’s what you’re implying we should do, isn’t it?”

Thomas shrinks back further, as if it could protect him from his own growing anger at himself.

“Maybe?”

Virgil’s voice is low, in the way that promises danger, but that also suggests that the danger is from his own mind and thoughts, rather than external factors like being held at knifepoint in a dark alley, and not even being able to fully see your captor’s face in the chiaroscuro light. Thomas usually doesn’t know if the shivers down his spine are from fear or the feeling of falling in love.

This time, it’s definitely fear, though.

“Lying’s only going to bring about more trouble, Thomas,” Virgil growls. “You _know_ this.”

At that, Roman makes some of his usual offended, mocking voices. He asks Virgil, “Then how are you going to describe _acting_, if it’s not just another form of lying?”

“We’re not talking about _that_ right now,” Virgil bites, his tone becoming low and almost growl-like.

Before either of them can hurt the other, Thomas interjects with, “I mean, I don’t want to say anything ridiculous, or, like… I don’t know! It’s _Joan_! I don’t know how I could possibly _bring_ myself to lie to _them_, of all people.”

Virgil exhales loudly, through his nose, and shifts to face Patton. “Honey, you’re his Morality. What do you think?”

Patton hums, pressing his index finger to his peachy pink lips. “Well, I think that there are quite a few viewpoints on honesty that we can take, here.”

Then he starts talking about philosophy. Specifically, Kant.

“Goodnight, everybody!” Thomas quips at the camera, before it’s too late to make that joke.

Now, Thomas has never really been into philosophy, and definitely not Kant, but Patton seems to know all of these facts off the top of his head. It’s kind of impressive, if unexpected. Not that Thomas doesn’t know that Patton is far cleverer than the other Sides give him credit for! It’s just that, well, Patton’s intelligence usually tends to lean towards the emotional and intra-interpersonal side of things, not how Kant believed that to lie was wholly immoral due to treating other individuals as a means to your end, even if honesty leads to your best friend being murdered.

The whole ‘individuals are solely responsible for their own actions, and nobody else’s’ thing is kind of undermined by the existence of mob mentality; oh, and nature versus nurture, since raising a kid is kind of like, being responsible for a small human’s actions and development.

Logan nods, a small smile playing on his lips. “Referencing famous philosophers, Patton? I’m impressed.”

Shifting in little rotations from left to right and a blush playing over his cheeks, Patton grins. “Well, I’m Morality! I’ve gotta know my stuff!”

“Not the word I’d use,” Virgil mutters, clicking his tongue.

“Thing is, quite a few people think that Kant’s perspective is a teensy bit idealistic,” says Patton.

Thomas sputters. “The death of my friend is _not_ ideal!”

Patton raises an eyebrow, responding, “So, you disagree with Kant?”

In the future, Thomas will look back on this moment. Perhaps, right now, he feels dread sinking in his chest, like he’s just made a deal with a silver-tongued devil who will kiss the knuckles of his hand with poison-painted lips.

Perhaps, instead, he doesn’t feel any apprehension at all, and only experiences that emotion when looking back at that memory. He _will_ look back at this memory, after all. He’ll look back on this whole day, over and over, and try to comprehend the narrative from every perspective. Either way, whenever he relives this moment, he will feel the sinking dread, again and again, until he feels as though he’s felt it from the start.

The most likely emotion taking hold of Thomas, though, is not as remarkable as either of those ideas. Simply, he might just feel a bit more anxious, and he might chalk it up to being put on the spot regarding philosophy – which, again, is something that Thomas has never really been into, and therefore cannot really construct an educated opinion on it – while his very own abstract subconscious, or maybe just Virgil, has caught up to something not being right.

This is a delightfully vague emotional situation, which also feels just like Virgil appearing on the edge of Thomas’s bed when he’s almost dozed off, saying, _“Something’s wrong,”_ and never specifying what might possibly be wrong, until Thomas leaves his bed to check the locks, and the stove, and the electrics, and the gas, and the external fuse box, and sees them all functioning as usual.

Either way, in response to Patton’s question, Thomas says, “Yeah, and?”

And, yeah, it _is_ okay to lie, but it’s not okay to lie for no reason, but Roman is convinced that lying’s the best thing to do to protect Joan’s feelings and Thomas’s friendship with them. Virgil responds to that by mentioning the inevitability of Thomas fucking it up, since he’s such a terrible liar. Of course, it starts escalating into Roman thinking that Virgil’s calling him a bad actor, until Patton redirects Thomas to Joan.

“I don’t know if I can lie to them, though,” says Thomas, even as Virgil glares at him.

Logan tilts his head, holding out his hand as if he’s presenting something. “It’s rather simple, actually. You simply speak as you usually would, but instead of communicating factual information or an idea – let me know if I lose you; I know how you can be – you communicate a falsehood.”

Geez. That’s going to do wonders for Thomas’s self-esteem. He says that he knows how to lie, but that he doesn’t know if he can lie to Joan, specifically, without feeling like a jerk.

At that, Roman bounces up in a couple of little hops, then spins with a final jump. At some point, his face has changed, to be replaced by-

“_Joan_!” Thomas yells. “Don’t hate me!”

“No, Thomas, it’s… It’s me. Roman.” Roman holds up his hands as though he’s trying to placate a spooked horse. “You know, the prince of your dreams? Literally, I’m your Prince. I’m your dreams. It’s simply that I thought, perhaps, we could figure out if you _can_ actually lie to Joan, by practicing?”

Thomas pulls at one of his short sidelocks for the split-second it takes to pull on a centimetre of hair, at most. “I mean, it’s _an_ idea, Roman. I’m just not sure if it’s a _good_ one. Lying to Joan that much… It just seems more like a punishment than anything.”

For a moment, Roman’s lips pull into a pout.

“Maybe, if you’re considering _lying_ to _Joan_,” Virgil sneers from his staircase perch, “you _deserve_ to be punished.”

And, uh, _wow_, that should _not_ make Thomas feel like that, but it _does_, and he can’t help it. His cheeks flush with a little heat, and, when he happens to glance at Patton, the moral Side is fighting a smile.

He always knew he was more of a thrower than a catcher.

Logan hums. “He’s got a point. If we’re considering distorting Joan’s reality as a means to our end, we may need more of a strategy.”

And, well, all the world’s a stage.

* * *

Including, apparently, Thomas’s mind. For one night _Joan_-ly, the Mind Palace Theatre will present a play in four acts!

It’s about how Thomas is an awful, lying bitch.

Directed by Patton; starring Thomas as himself and Roman as Joan, which is weird, because, again, Thomas isn’t into Joan like that. Logan is their excellent dramaturge, and Virgil has what is obviously the most entirely anxiety-inducing job of all: all of the tech stuff.

The first one, he lies to Roman-as-Joan-as-some-weird-interpretation-of-Thomas’s-Mother. Logan defines that one as a ‘lie of commission’. That’s a lie wherein one presents fiction as fact.

“Like,” says Patton, his chin perched on the palm of his hand, “if you were to tell someone that you were okay, even if you weren’t. Because you’re not okay, and saying that you _are_, in order to alleviate their worries, is a lie.”

Thomas nods. “I got that loud and clear, Patton.”

Logan blinks a few times. “No, you didn’t. Patton spoke at a reasonably moderate volume. He wasn’t notably loud. That is _another_ falsehood.”

Act Two. He deflects, and tells Roman-as-Joan-as-Thomas’s-Boss-who-is-called-Mr.-Doodooface that, based on who he is as a person, if Thomas missed a day of work, it was for a good reason. Logan calls that one a ‘character lie’; one that relies on an individual’s reputation, and the trust placed within them by the victims of the liar.

“If you pretend to be someone you’re not, like you’re committing identity fraud or whatever, does that count as a ‘character lie’?” Virgil asks Patton, leaning onto the stage just enough that they can make eye contact.

Patton smiles wildly, thinning his lips. “Well, now you mention it, probably! Good thinking, friendo! Still, character lies are pretty versatile. Retaining your usual behaviour while _communicating falsehoods _– you hear that, Logan? – I think that could also count. Like, just plastering on a happy face, and pretending that you’ve got nothing to hide… Character lies are kind of like the basics of being good at lying in general!”

Roman-as-A-Possibly-British-Frat-Bro is who Thomas has to lie to in the third act, but his mind is elsewhere. It’s on the venomous glare that Virgil directed at Patton. It’s Patton, using a new nickname; one that _isn’t_ a romantically saccharine pet-name.

Even without talking, Thomas is still a liar. A ‘lie of omission’ is what Logan calls it. Simply not mentioning all the facts when faced with opening up to someone.

“Like keeping secrets!” Patton exclaims, then explains, “Keeping secrets is lying. If someone asks you which celebrities you have a crush on, and you say, for example, Gwendoline Christie, that would be a lie of _commission_.”

Roman snorts. “I admire her, but… I’m gay. Thomas, we’re _gay_. I’m just not into her, like, at all.”

“However, let’s say you say you have a crush on Michael B. Jordan.”

At that, Roman sighs with a smile. “Don’t we all?”

“Yes, we do!” Logan calls from backstage. “_We’re all the same person_.”

Patton giggles cutely, and continues, “But you don’t mention your crushes on any other celebrity, leading that someone to believe that you only have a crush on Michael B. Jordan.”

“Well, _yeah_, that makes sense,” Thomas nods. “I’m not going to hold up somebody for hours just to list all of the famous guys I’m into.”

“Lies of omission are all over the place, in life.” Patton’s sigh is almost as dreamy as Roman’s was. “People leave things out _constantly_. Let’s keep talking about crushes, because it’s really intriguing and I’m really feeling the romance-y stuff right now. If you do something nice for your crush, and they ask you why you did it, you can just say something like, ‘I felt like it,’ or, ‘I appreciate your friendship,’ and those statements _would_ be truthful.”

Roman nods, and softly adds, “But it’s not the whole story, because the real reason is… It’s because you’re in love with them.”

“Bingo!” Patton trills. “Now, onto Act Four!”

The fourth act doesn’t end with any new information regarding lying. Nothing, except for that, when it comes down to it, Thomas really _can’t_ tell a lie to Joan.

* * *

They rise back up in the living room. It takes Thomas a while to see any of the Sides properly, because he can barely see anything through the wetness of his eyes.

“Thomas?”

That’s Virgil’s voice. Reserved and on-edge, like he’s afraid that any move he makes will ruin everything. Or maybe that’s just Thomas, projecting.

Who the fuck is he meant to be kidding? _Of course _Virgil feels like that. _Thomas_ feels like that. Virgil _is_ Thomas. And, god, doesn’t he just _hate_ it?

“He appears to be leaking,” states Logan.

“He’s crying, and you know it, so stop acting like every emotion is some deep mystery to you,” Virgil snaps. “Either shut up or do something.”

Thomas can hear stammering noises, but more than that, he can hear the pounding of his own head, and the possibility of Joan hating them, and shouting, and he can hear every lie’s definition, and his own gasping breaths and his own wrenching sobs.

He can hear his voice, groaning out through his lips in noises that are not words, and which probably never were.

“_Love_,” he hears, right when the glow of light in front of his closed eyelids turns dark, and his face is pressed against buttons, and clasps and a silky, silky sash. Strong arms wrap around him, holding him close, and rocking from left to right in a high-school slow dance.

It just makes Thomas cry more. He’s not gone so far into his stress that he can’t remember how Roman’s body feels against his own, or that strong smell of sandalwood and smoke and steel. The thing is, being confronted with the knowledge that Roman will still hold him, like he loves him more than anything in the world, makes Thomas wail in grief for a stupid, imaginary romance.

“Patton,” he hears Logan hiss. “Patton, you’re the emotional one. What are you doing?”

“Uh, what do you want me to do?”

“I don’t know! You understand how to deal with emotions. I don’t know what to do. I’m relying on you, dear.”

Hearing that pet-name through his gasping sobs doesn’t really make anything better. Logan can love Patton, and be open about it, but Thomas can’t even look at any of them without feeling like he’s taking advantage.

He pulls himself away from Roman and curls in on himself. He’s hurt Roman before by leading him on. He can’t do it again. He won’t _let himself_ do it again.

Lock it up. Lock it up; lock it up. Just push down those feelings. Push down all of them, and put them in a place where they won’t bother him anymore. Thomas just needs to dry his eyes, and force his expression into a grimace, because he can’t even _smile_ properly.

“See! Everything’s fine,” Patton says. His smile is a lot better than Thomas’s attempt. It even looks real. “Sometimes, we just need to cry it out!”

“Yeah, but then we need to _talk_ about the issues, instead of going right back to repressing them,” responds Virgil, “which is what Thomas is doing _right now_.”

“No, Patton’s right,” says Thomas.

Or, well, he tries to, but it comes out as just a croak. Roman passes Thomas a glass of water, which he chugs gratefully.

He repeats his previous statement, clearly this time, then adds, “I just needed to, uh, cry it out. Logan, doesn’t that do chemical stuff in your brain?”

Before Logan can speak, Virgil raises his hand. “Yeah, no. That’s a lie, Thomas. Omission, commission; it doesn’t matter.”

“If Thomas did lie, his usage of the word ‘just’ would turn it into a lie of commission, since it qualifies the statement as the sole needed action to solve an issue,” interrupts Logan. “Crying can release various chemicals built up in the body that affect stress levels. However, Thomas’s current issue of if he should or shouldn’t lie to Joan cannot be solved so simply. We still have not decided upon a course of action.”

“He’s _not_ lying.”

Virgil, Thomas had expected to say that. But, simultaneously, Roman uttered the same sentence.

After a moment, Roman glances around the room, just to see everyone staring at him.

“What?” he asks, defensively. “I’m not going to tell Thomas to do something if it hurts him like _this_! I exist to push him out of his comfort zone and towards his dreams; not to _harm_ him.”

“And I stand by what I said before,” says Virgil. “Joan _will_ find out if we lie to them.”

“How do you know? Can you see the future, friendo?” Patton gibes. “Hey, Logan! Can Thomas see the future?”

As if he’s automated to answer any question in a timely manner, which he might as well be, Logan replies, “No.”

“Then how can you tell?” Patton’s smile at Virgil is not kind, or encouraging, or indulgent. He is not smiling like he always does.

“Because I’m terrible at lying,” Thomas says. “I can’t keep my story straight when I’m under pressure.”

“You can’t keep any of your stories straight,” Roman interjects. “We just can’t help making it gayer.”

Thomas keeps speaking as though Roman’s little joke didn’t make his heart swell like it’s last February again. “I know that I will not be able to lie to Joan about something this big. The fact that lying is wrong is too ingrained into my morality for me to lie to such a close friend about something so important. I have to tell the truth, and risk losing Joan’s friendship, rather than disrespecting them by distorting their reality and using them for my own ends.”

“Haven’t you learnt anything?” Patton asks, his eyes narrowing as he leans forwards. “Thomas, lying will spare Joan’s feelings!”

“It won’t, though!” Thomas almost flinches at his own volume. “One way or another, Joan will discover that I lied to them. Maybe they’ll meet the guy I was with, or I’ll forget my story, or I’ll just confess that I lied to them because I won’t be able to deal with the guilt. Either way…”

Logan shifts a little. Slowly, he raises his index finger, with an unreadable expression on his face. “Thomas, I’m afraid… I, um, don’t understand.”

“What?” Thomas’s head jerks to look at Logan, his throat choking up with the worry that immediately comes from seeing Logan even a little distressed.

“You say that _‘it’s too ingrained into your morality to lie,’_ regarding the communication of a severely perceived falsehood towards Joan.” With his hand angled flat and vertical, Logan gestures towards Patton. “Your Morality, however, is the one _encouraging_ you to lie.”

Virgil heaves out a breath, somewhere between a sigh and a shout. “This is what I’ve been trying to-”

Patton’s face twists into a silent snarl. He clenches his fist with a twist of his wrist, and Virgil’s palm covers his pale lips with a loud _slap_.

Logan takes such a quick breath that Thomas would call it a gasp, if he didn’t know him well enough to figure that he’s probably be offended by the implication of an emotional reaction.

“I understand now,” he says.

Thomas looks between the four of them, his eyes lingering on Virgil. Virgil, whose shadowed eyes are almost cartoonishly wide, circling his iris in white sclera and smudged black pencil. His fingers dig into his cheeks, turning his cheeks, already as pale as they are, into a worrying shade of white.

“I don’t!” Thomas exclaims. “I don’t understand any of this! Why does this keep happening to Virgil? Why’s Patton acting stranger than he has been all day?”

“He’s not-”

If he was scared before, Thomas is now petrified. Not only is Virgil silenced, but Roman’s been cut off before he finished the most worrying start of a sentence said today.

“Thomas, you need to listen to me.”

He nods at Logan. It’s not as if he’s got much of a choice. His options are ‘panic’, ‘listen to Logan’, and ‘investigate Patton being weird’. “I’m listening.”

Logan says, “Do you remember Christmas? And what Roman told you about the Others?”

“That they _exist_?” asks Thomas.

“Well, yes.” Logan’s knuckles pale as he grips the arm of his glasses to adjust them back up his nose. “But, no matter what, you are in charge of your own actions, and your own understanding of yourself. You are in charge of us. Whatever you wish to know, you can know, just by being open to learning something new about yourself.”

“But I _don’t_ want to know! That’s why I’m so scared of this guy!” He wants to pull at his shirt collar, or at his hair; anything to force this nervous energy from his body.

Patton’s lips pull into a sneer. “Oh, Thomas, there’s no reason to be afraid of yourself.”

“But, at least subconsciously, _you already know_ who he is,” Logan explains. His voice is harried. His tone is calm. Thomas can hear his heartbeat thudding in his ears. “You just need to accept it. _Please_, Thomas.”

All it takes is one moment of pleading eye contact with Logan.

Virgil tears his hand from his mouth and snarls, “_Deceit_.”

The world turns a few shades darker. Where ‘Patton’ once stood, there’s now a different man, identical to Thomas. Identical, save for the serpentine scales that glisten green over the left side of his face, which trail down his neck and under his brown collar, and for the split pupil of his striking yellow left eye.

“_Deceit_?” Thomas repeats.

He’s always thought of himself as a person who doesn’t particularly look good in hats, but Deceit – if that is his real name – wears his black bowler hat with confidence. It matches his black capelet, and contrasts against the yellow trim of his coat and his gloves.

When he moves his mouth to speak, the slit on Deceit’s scaled cheek opens slightly, showing more of his teeth than a normal person would through his translucent membrane.

“Who’s she?” he drawls. “Never heard of her.”

“I hate this guy and his-” Roman startles, “-weird, sexy, snakey face. Wait, what?”

With sarcasm so heavy that it wouldn’t be permitted as carry-on luggage on an aeroplane, Deceit says, “Oh, I _love_ the new outfit, Roman!”

Roman blushes. “Thank you?”

“And, Virgil,” he continues, “I just _adore_ your new style of eyeshadow. It doesn’t make you look like a raccoon at _all_.”

Virgil flips Deceit off. “Nice gloves. Did you just finish washing some dishes?”

For a second, Deceit’s nostrils flare. Then, he says, “_Yes_.”

“How didn’t I know about him before?” Thomas asks Logan, because Logan always knows the answers.

“You were convinced that you’re an honest person,” says Logan. “Incorrectly, I must amend.”

Thomas blinks, and not because tears are welling up in his eyes. “But I _am_ an honest person!”

“Oh, Thomas, you really are _so_ honest,” coos Deceit. “You’re such a _good person_. Everyone says so, after all.”

Virgil interrupts with, “He kept stopping us from saying anything that would reveal any of the secrets you keep from yourself.”

“I was just _so_ underworked for the first twenty-three years of your life,” Deceit sighs dramatically, rolling his eyes. “I was _overjoyed_ when you started repressing your feelings again.”

Thomas sputters. He’d gotten so swept up in wondering how far down those scales went, that his heart went forgotten until it skipped a beat. “_Where’s Patton_?”

“Where have you hidden my love, vile villain!” declaims Roman, drawing his katana from an imaginary sheath at his hip.

With a dark chuckle, Deceit intones, “Oh, he’s locked up in the depths of the darkest corners of Thomas’s mind. Never again shall he f- _tuck_ you into bed at night, until you find him and awaken him with true love’s kiss.” His voice grows louder, until he’s letting out a Disney villain cackle. “But you will never find him! He is simply too well-hidden! _Ow_!”

He jumps, and jolts, and Thomas hears a familiar voice.

“Ooh, wait, just give me a moment. Ah… _There_!”

Patton rises up with a little bounce, and everything settles. Thomas hadn’t even realised how wrong it all felt until Patton set it right.

“That didn’t hurt,” Deceit mutters, “like, at all.”

Patton hums, his smile only slightly more strained than normal, and tells Deceit, “You’re kind of in my spot.”

“Because you were doing _such_ a good job at filling your role as one of Thomas’s Sides, I really _didn’t_ have to step in.” Deceit actually seems to be snarling, like a vicious guard dog.

Still with the bright smile, Patton asks, “Then why show up? I mean, I know I’m doing pretty good as Morality, _and_ as the core of his feelings. I’ve even stopped hiding my bad emotions so much!”

Deceit gives him a dumbfounded glare.

“I mean, why _is_ he here?” Roman asks.

“To the best of my knowledge,” replies Logan, “he’s been trying to make Thomas more open to the concept of lying, only to get exposed as a fraud, and subsequently speaking in opposites and-or sarcasm.”

“Succinct,” Virgil remarks.

Patton’s face falls in dismay. “Deceit, you’ve been telling Thomas to _lie_?”

“I thought a refresher of the basics would make a fitting introduction,” he responds, his lip curling.

Roman snorts and points. “Uh, _lie_!”

Deceit twirls to face him, hissing in a way that sounds startlingly like Virgil. That shouldn’t actually be as surprising as it is, since they’re the same person. “I don’t _only_ speak in lies!”

“Another lie!” says Roman. “Wow, I am _en pointe _today!”

Again, Deceit does the twisty-wrist. Roman’s hand slaps over his mouth like it was pulled there by magnets.

“Thank you for giving me a chance to _speak_,” he smirks, coolly as ever, but Thomas can see his fist trembling.

Then, Deceit lifts up the left side of his capelet, to reveal a two-headed snake on the breast of his coat, embroidered in canary yellow and outlined in black.

“I am Deceit,” he says, leaving no room for another Side to speak. “I am the protector of everything you’d like to hide from yourself, and I am here to tell you that such a thing is _unsustainable_. Take what you have learnt from me today. Take it and do what you will, before I tire enough to let it all fall apart.”

He drops his capelet and loosens his fist. Roman's hand falls from his open mouth and he wipes it on his other sleeve, while making a noise of disgust at his own action of, apparently, licking his hand so he’d let go. It’s something Thomas would have done with his brothers, when he was a kid.

“Oh, and, dearest?”

A shiver of something between disgust and delight runs through Thomas at that. He lets his gaze flicker up Deceit’s face, and – oh, what would the part of his mouth where his skin becomes scales feel like? No, that’s not what he needs to think about. When he looks into his serpent-Side’s mismatched eyes, he can see some kind of inexplicable acknowledgement of that thought.

Though he remains silent about Thomas’s grotesque attraction, before Deceit sinks down, he says one more thing.

“I can _guarantee_ you will see me again.”


	5. we get it!!! he's a useless gay!!!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warnings for... steamy makeouts!!! also discussion of consent. but, honestly, there's a makeout, and i think it's still teen rated? i have not been a teenager for, like, almost two years
> 
> authorial humiliation in the endnote

It takes a moment for Thomas to remember to breathe enough, so that he can exclaim, “_What the fuck_?”

Virgil shrugs. “That’s Deceit. Excuse my language-”

At this, Patton covers his ears.

“-but I fucking _hate_ him.”

“While swearing _is_ rude,” says Patton, removing his hands from his ears, “I can’t be upset at you for saying that. But _‘hate’_… You can’t _hate_ Deceit!”

Virgil fixes Patton with a glare. His lips are pulled back, baring the glistening incisors of the left side of his jaw. “Why not, Patton?”

Patton’s mouth opens and closes for a few moments, like a goldfish, before he manages to speak. “Be-because Deceit is… A _part_ of Thomas. He’s a Side, just like the rest of us.”

“But he’s an asshole,” Virgil retorts. “He impersonated you, and he keeps forcing me to stop talking, because _he’s_ hiding Thomas’s secret from you.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” says Logan. “Thomas _can’t_ have secrets. We’re _all_ him, and he knows about Deceit.”

“And yet, we don’t know Deceit’s name,” Virgil replies, patiently.

He looks up.

“Hey, Thomas?” he asks.

Shamefully, Thomas focuses on Virgil without all the hesitation of a dog following commands of his owner, who is probably holding an entire salami. Thomas is a dog, and he wants that salami, and that salami is Virgil, and this metaphor is getting far too weird, and also kind of gross.

“Yeah?”

Virgil’s face is impassive. Nobody looks like they know about the whole salami metaphor, but Roman, at least, has always been capable of a semi-decent poker face.

Virgil asks, “Do you know about any of the other Sides?”

Thomas feels his face twitch. “You mean, there’s still more? Past Deceit?”

Virgil doesn’t reply. He just raises an eyebrow at Logan, whose lips purse for a second. Logan’s throat moves, like he’s swallowing something, but he remains stony-faced, making eye contact with no-one.

Thomas could reach out. He should cup Logan’s face, and comfort him. He should fix whatever’s making his Logic, his left brain, so upset. But the problem is that there’s a secret that Thomas has that he can’t tell, because that would ruin everything beyond all explanation.

If his Sides knew he was in love with them, they would welcome him into their relationship, and bend over backwards to accommodate him, because that’s what they _do_. Thomas is mostly in control of himself. He unmasked Deceit, and he got Virgil back from ducking out into nowhere. He could confess, and he could have everything he wants.

But does he want it? Does he want to pursue relationships with people who aren’t individuals in their own rights, but just metaphysical clones of himself, each of whom personifies a different part of his singular personality?

Yes. Yes, he does.

Would outsiders find it weird? Joan knows the Sides, just like most of his close friends and family, and a bunch of strangers on the internet, do, so maybe Thomas could ask them? It would be so awkward, though, and voicing the fact might expose his secret to every Side, including the ones who aren’t already aware – which, now, just seems to be Logan, and maybe Patton.

The Sides dating each other is one thing, because they’re all the same, being bits of one personality. But if Thomas joined them, and dated all the little pieces that make up himself? Yeah, that’s weird.

Can he ethically do so? Can he ethically date four beings, all of whom will consent to pretty much anything he asks of them, if he really wants them to?

Well, that depends on whether he counts the personifications of his personality traits as, uh, _people_.

It’s better to keep quiet, until he sorts everything out in his head. It’s best to crush the love he feels down, below everything else, so he can ignore it.

“See?” Virgil gestures at Thomas, his outstretched arm flailing up and down and up and down. “He’s literally getting us distracted right now.”

“I was suddenly consumed by various thoughts regarding our unconventional relationship, and how it connects to the world outside of Thomas’s mind,” nods Logan.

“Well,” smiles Patton, looking at each Side, “I was thinking about how much I love you all!”

Roman doesn’t speak. For a second, Thomas sees him looking at him, but then he averts his gaze to the carpet. He brushes his hair from where it falls into his face, and Thomas forces himself to look at his other Sides.

“You need to tell them,” says Virgil, cautiously, like he’s trying to soothe a frightened rabbit.

It’s not like Thomas doesn’t feel like a frightened rabbit, either. At Virgil’s soft words, he feels his heart skip a beat, before it starts pounding in his throat at twice the speed as it did before.

“_One, two, three, four_,” he hears. “_Hold, two, three, four, five, six, seven_.”

He’s found that his eyes have fluttered closed, and he lets Virgil’s familiar tone wash over him.

“_Out, two, three, four, five, six, seven_-”

He blinks and looks up, just to find that all of his Sides look concerned, and loving, and he hates it. He hates it, because he _doesn’t_ hate it. He would take everything that they would give, and he’d hurt himself with imaginary arguments and imaginary make-up sex, and everything that’s real to them but, well, not _less_ real to him, but… Less _acceptably_ real, he thinks.

“Eight-”

“I _can’t_,” Thomas says, humiliatingly, through his gritted teeth.

“It’s _hurting_ you, Thomas, and that _sucks_. None of us want you to hurt. And, well, what are we going to do? Judge you?” Virgil’s smile isn’t out of happiness. It’s like when his mother would be in the front of the car, trying to keep a calm face for her children, but they could all tell that something was coiling up inside of her. An upturned grimace of reassurance. “Thomas, you can’t hide it forever. How you feel; it’s not going to go away, and you know it. Deceit’s shown himself because he’s tiring of hiding it. _You’re_ tiring of hiding it.”

Thomas’s brain thuds against his skull, he thinks, because of how quickly he’s shaking his head. He whimpers – _whimpers!_ – “_No_.”

He can’t even deny himself denying himself right. He just sounds pathetic.

“_Yes_, Thomas.” Virgil’s brows furrow, and his quavering voice betrays the concern of his white-knuckled fists. “You _have_ to.”

“Now, Virgil, Thomas doesn’t have to do anything he doesn’t want to,” says Patton, but even he sounds hesitant.

Logan responds with, “But we’re all curious to know what’s going on. We all want to know. _Deceit_ wants Thomas to know, but Thomas still doesn’t want to divulge this information about himself. It must be important, if he’s going to such great lengths to hide it, despite the fact that we won’t judge him for it.”

“So just _say it_, Thomas. Just _tell_ them.” hisses Virgil, his eyes shining. “It’s not as hard as you think it is.”

“_No_!”

That’s not a whimper.

The strength of Thomas’s voice trembles in his chest, all the way up to his heart.

“_No_, I’m _not_ telling them.” Thomas’s voice comes from his mouth like the ringing of a heavy bell. “It’s my business.”

“We’re all you! It’s _all_ our business,” says Logan.

“Okay, kiddos, we all need to cal-”

Virgil interrupts Patton’s pleading. “Just _say it_! It’s like ripping off a band-aid! You’ll only regret it more if you _don’t speak now_!”

Thomas, for his part, doesn’t flinch at the sound of Virgil’s voice folding over itself in a tremendous echo, even when Patton shrinks away until he’s practically pressed against the blinds.

“I’m _not_ going to listen to the stupid voice in my head that tells me to jump at my own shadow and never leave the house!” Thomas retorts.

This time, Virgil’s teeth aren’t bared in the simulacrum of a smile. “What’s _that_ supposed to mean?”

“That you’re an _asshole_!” shouts Thomas. “Why the _hell_ would I listen to my _Anxiety_?”

Silence. Then;

“Thomas, I… That crossed a line-”

“Because he provides _valuable insight_ into-”

“Like, I know I’ve been harsh to him in the past, but that’s going-”

“Gosh, Thomas, that’s-”

The words overlap into a wave of nonsense. Guilt, and shame, and love, still. How can he love his Sides so intensely and enduringly, yet feel so disgusted at himself, when he’s the result of all of them combined?

Thomas bellows, thunderously, “Can’t you all just _leave me alone_?”

* * *

He’s never forced them to sink out before. Honestly, he doesn’t think he forced them to _this_ time. They’re parts of him, yes, and he does have a certain amount of self-control, but he can’t fight against his feelings, or his instinct. His sense of logic is integral to his ability to function independently; or, well, as independently as he can, when he’s constantly followed by four – no, _five_ – caricatures of himself. All of his Sides are integral to his existence as a person.

Still, they’ve always come and gone as they please, like the weather, or his moods. They’ve only left when Thomas’s dilemma of the day is solved. He doesn’t ever force them to leave. He never did, until now.

There’s nothing really to do about it now. Well, there is, but it involves talking openly to his Sides about his feelings, and that’s a whole can of worms that he’s really not up to dealing with at the moment. It’s been a long day, and he hasn’t even responded to Joan. They might be getting worried.

It doesn’t matter. Thomas changes from his t-shirt with the fun, reversible sequins that he doesn’t really feel like messing with, anymore, into a pair of sweatpants and a plain white t-shirt, both of which are soft against his skin after years of wear. That way, if anyone pops up in the middle of the night, he won’t embarrass himself by being half-naked.

He checks his phone, squinting at the sudden brightness. Joan’s sent quite a few texts through the evening.

_Seriously, where were you? Dw it’s just that the reading went well and I kinda missed you._

_Are you okay?_

_Did you get kidnapped or something? Please reply_

Thomas taps out a response, something like; _I was on a date and forgot, sorry. My anxiety went into overdrive and I’m just straight-up not having a good time._

His phone buzzes in his hand a second later.

_Dude, it’s fine! Well, it sucks. Virgil doing ok?_

There’s nobody for Thomas to lie to about the fact that he flinches when he reads that question. He types, then erases his message, then types again.

_Things are all a bit weird with the sides now._

Then, a second later: _Sorry, I’m just tired. Goodnight_

_Goodnight_, Joan sends back.

For a while, Thomas scrolls through his Twitter feed. It’s something to do as he waits for his eyes to close. Mostly, he just looks at the things his fans tag him in, because, well, he loves them all. He wants them to feel appreciated, and to know that he appreciates them, and if something as simple as liking a tweet can make a single one of them happy, he’ll do it.

“You messed up.”

Thomas takes a moment to close his eyes and sigh, before turning his phone screen off and putting it down. He turns onto his back and shifts up so that he’s sitting in his bed, with his legs crossed under his blanket to make two soft peaks where it covers his knees.

Sure enough, there’s Deceit, standing in front of Thomas’s window. The curtains are drawn, but the streetlights still manage to illuminate the contrasting sides of his face. His skin seems to glow, and his scales glisten, and some part of Thomas just wants to invite him into the bed.

“Deceit?” he says instead.

Deceit doesn’t bother acknowledging that admittedly pathetic statement. He just fixes Thomas with a glare and says, “I know what happened after I left, and you messed it up.”

“What’s that meant to mean?”

“It means that I taught you about what dishonesty will do to you,” says Deceit. “You’re so amazing at lying, Thomas. You could keep it up forever.”

Thomas blinks. Is his mouth hanging open? “I _think_ that’s probably sarcasm.”

“Me? Sarcastic? _Never_.” Deceit holds out one gloved hand, as if he’s inspecting it from a distance. Still, between the splayed fingers, he’s clearly still looking directly at Thomas. “What did you learn, today?”

After a moment of processing the question, Thomas pulls his blanket further up his body, so it wraps over his shoulders like an armless snuggie.

“That I’m bad,” Thomas says.

Deceit doesn’t speak. Neither does Thomas. This continues for several moments.

“That’s it? That’s your whole sentence?” Deceit squints. “I thought you were going to say ‘_at lying_,’ because at least _that’s_ true. But… You learnt that you’re _bad_?”

Thomas nods. He can’t take his eyes off of Deceit, and not just because he’s a disaster who is definitely into his own doppelgängers. He blinks as if it will improve his perception of the dimly-lit Side. Deceit takes off his hat for a moment, and runs a hand through his hair, before replacing it.

He sits, perched on the edge of Thomas’s mattress, and says, “I apologise. That was… Not my intention.”

“How am I supposed to believe you?” Thomas demands. “You’re _Deceit_. I’ve only known you for less than a day, and you spent most of that time being a jerk and lying. Your whole shtick is lying. I can’t trust you. Why am I even _listening_ to you?”

“What did you tell Joan, when you texted them?”

Thomas flinches at the non-sequitur. “That I’m tired. And that’s true, so don’t go telling me that-”

Groaning, Deceit waves one of his hands for a second, and says, “You know what I mean.”

“The truth.” Thomas stares at his blanket to avoid looking at Deceit. “I told them the truth.”

“And _whyever_ would you do that?” asks Deceit, in a wheedling tone. “Did you not feel confident about keeping your story straight? Were you, perhaps, _frightened_ of being found out?”

“No,” Thomas answers.

Deceit’s smile doesn’t seem mocking or cruel in any way, though it might just be the lack of light disguising the meanness. Still, Thomas’s eyes have adjusted by now. He should be able to tell.

“Then why were you honest? You could have lost your friendship by doing that.” Deceit chuckles so softly that Thomas is still pretty certain that he was just breathing a bit louder for a second. “You didn’t, but you could’ve.”

Thomas shrugs. His blanket falls into a pile up to his mid-torso on his lap, but he doesn’t pull it back up.

“I respect them,” he says. “I care about them too much to, uh, _distort their reality_.”

“Then why are you lying to yourself?”

His knuckles are white against his dark duvet cover. Thomas has to blink away a little blurriness before he raises his head to glare at Deceit.

“That’s different,” he tells him. “The other Sides don’t have to know. If they did, they’d let me force myself on them.”

“That doesn’t make much sense, but please continue,” Deceit responds.

One fist tightens even more as the other loosens to gesture, palm-up, as Thomas says, “I control them all, in my head. I control my own actions. I’m in charge of them.”

“That much is true,” Deceit nods, “but it is still rather incomplete.”

“In what way?” Thomas can feel his lips stretch out over bared teeth, but it’s not in a happy grin.

“Can you stop Logan from wanting to learn? Or Virgil from his knee-jerk reactions? Can you stop Roman from feeling hurt when they don’t like his work; or Patton from hoarding your happy memories?” asks Deceit, before dropping his final question of that cluster with an unreadable smile. “Even now, can you stop yourself from loving your ex?”

“_Go_.”

Thomas wriggles down into his bed, pulling the blanket over himself. He turns away, but just finds Deceit crouched beside his bed, at eye level with him.

“I forced the others to sink out, so _go away_,” he hisses.

Deceit presses a finger to his lips mockingly, then says, “No, I don’t think I will.”

He scrunches his eyes shut tight, but that just draws his attention to the sounds that Deceit’s strange mouth makes when he speaks. The hisses and the glottal stops; they’re all familiar, because they’re Thomas’s own, but Deceit makes them sound _different_.

“You can’t control who you love, Thomas. The heart wants what it wants. So does the brain, the imagination, and the anxiety, for that matter.” He pulls out of the aside tone that his last sentence fell into, to continue, “Nevertheless, you can’t control it. Would you force the four of them to end their relationship?”

Thomas would not. Deceit probably knows this, because he doesn’t wait long for an answer.

“They love each other because they love _you_, Thomas. Yes, you have mild control over your Sides, but only to the point where you learn what you could have otherwise learnt by thinking over things for a while. You eventually would have learnt that you have a Side that specialises in deception, regardless of whether or not you unveiled me today.”

“I forced them to leave, though,” Thomas mumbles. He’s definitely not audible, through the muffling of the blanket.

Still, Deceit answers him as if he’s heard perfectly. He probably did. Sides can be weird like that. “I’d bet you my hat that they were just trying to give you space.”

“But _why_?” asks Thomas, pulling his face away from the cloth. “Usually, they stay until I’ve resolved whatever I’ve screwed up. They don’t just… _Leave_ me.”

“Have your arguments with them ever gotten this heated before?”

It’s a rhetorical question, Thomas knows, but he still answers, “I don’t think so.”

“You haven’t,” Deceit confirms.

“Then why do…” Thomas gestures outwards with his hands. “Why did they leave me?”

“They thought you needed space, and they were probably right. To be honest, Virgil probably needed a bit of time, too,” says Deceit. “I’m not saying that you were too harsh on him, but…”

“I was.”

Thomas curls his neck so his chin almost touches the hollow between his clavicles, but the feeling of cotton against his cheek interrupts his little pity party.

It’s Deceit’s hand, caressing the side of his face.

“Now that your Sides have comforted Virgil, you should be feeling calmer. You should definitely apologise, despite the fact that – spoiler warning – they’ve already forgiven you. You’re going to need to earn back Virgil’s trust a little, but he loves you. They all do. They don’t listen to you because they’re your puppets, but because they want to make you happy,” he explains. “That’s all any of us want; for you to be happy. Won’t you let us do that?”

Shaking one’s head while lying down is not a very understandable motion. Essentially, it is horizontal nodding, wherein you repeatedly squash the left side of your face against a pillow.

Deceit understands, though, and asks, “Why not?”

“It’s _wrong_,” Thomas insists, but he can tell that his voice is weakening.

“In what way?”

This would be so much easier if Deceit was being caustic and rude, but he just sounds so _gentle_.

“Power imbalance,” says Thomas. “Whatever I say, goes. That’s not how healthy relationships work.”

“Between humans,” Deceit argues, still not unkindly. “We’re not human – well, we _are_. But we’re all parts of you. Actually, we can influence you a lot more than you think, now that I think about it. Like I said; we’re not your puppets. We’re your Sides, and you’re our Centre. We’re all parts of the same whole. If one part is not working optimally, the whole being will fail, like in Steven Universe, with the fusions.”

Thomas blinks blearily. “Are you using Cartoon Therapy at me?”

“No,” Deceit quickly says. “Well, actually, yes.”

For a moment, Thomas finds himself giggling, and seeing Deceit smile as well.

“We’re incomplete without you,” says Deceit, as the laughter fades to silence. “You need to accept yourself, Thomas, and stop lying about how you feel.”

And, in the space between consciousness and sleep, Thomas feels lips brush against his forehead.

“Sweet dreams, dearest.”

* * *

The sky he dreams of is blue. It is not a bright, endless blue, but rather a blue that is softened by the clouds that drift imperceptibly up there, turning the sky into a watercolour canvas. A sky where the sun is disguised by the clouds’ cotton whiteness, bathing everything in an even, warm light.

Under that sky, there is a green-grassed hill, overlooking a canopy of trees. It’s a familiar forest, to Thomas, even though he’s never seen it from this angle before. If he squints, and if he leans far enough, he can almost see the clearing where he and Roman spent so much time.

“Thomas?”

And that’s Roman, right now! Right before Thomas, in his white prince costume, with his sword-bearing hand hanging loosely at his side, stands Roman. His lips are parted and his eyes are wide, like he wasn’t expecting his own Centre in his realm of dreams.

“Roman,” Thomas responds. He doesn’t mean for his voice to sound like _that_, but the name comes out like a prayer.

Is it just his imagination, or does Roman seem to flinch? Thomas isn’t really sure, in the end, if it matters, because Roman straightens up and smiles almost immediately.

“What can I do y-” He pauses to blow a quick raspberry with his tongue. “Do for you, Thomas?” asks Roman.

How is he meant to answer that? How can Thomas explain the events of five minutes or moments or hours ago; or those of eight – no, _nine_ months ago? He’s spent close to three-quarters of a year rejecting Roman, and rejecting how Roman got a better deal through the whole ordeal. How does one apologise for being in love, and fearing that love, and hurting that lover? If he says those words, are they an explanation or an excuse?

“I hurt Virgil,” he says, instead. “I-I mean, I hurt all of you, but I was way too harsh on Virgil.”

Roman nods. “You were, indeed. Though, then again, he _was_ putting rather a lot of pressure on you.”

“I should’ve been better, though. I should have told them all – told _you all_ – ages ago, when I first realised.” Thomas lowers himself to sit on the chartreuse grass, and Roman follows him down.

“You’re afraid,” says Roman, in soft response. “It’s okay to be afraid.”

“I hurt all of you,” Thomas replies.

“That’s less okay,” Roman reaches out a hand to pluck at blades of grass idly, in that emptily full space between their knees. “But I forgive you. We all do.”

Thomas wishes that he could hear the distant rustle of wind blowing through the branches below, or that a bird would sing. Anything to fill the silence that he cannot speak in.

“All of us love you, Thomas,” Roman says, but the words feel just as real as the too-perfect space this dream has provided him with. “Sometimes, we’ll all cuddle up to each other, and only talk about you.”

It can’t be real. It isn’t real; Thomas knows that, because the Sides aren’t real. But they’re just as real as him, so, what? Does that make _him_ unreal? No. These are the illusions he drowns himself in so that he can pretend that he’s not okay with this weird kind of narcissism. He’s himself, and so are they, and he loves them all.

Roman says, as softly as his lips, “I love you.”

He’s kneeling now, and leaning in towards Thomas. He puts one hand on the ground, brushing against by Thomas’s right hip, to stabilise himself or something, and the thumb of the other brushes against Thomas’s mouth.

Thomas bites his lip, his tongue darting out to wet them. Are they red? Are they parted just the right amount to look appealing, without betraying his desperation? It doesn’t matter if Roman can tell. He knows, already, how much Thomas wants him. They share a heart. How can they not love each other?

Roman’s lips brush against Thomas’s, like a blossoming tree’s petals fall in late spring. The only way that Thomas knows it happened is because he can still feel the ghost of the ghost of the kiss against his mouth, and because, when his eyes flutter open, Roman is still in front of him, still holding Thomas’s cheek in his hand, and smiling in an almost incredulous way.

Then he leans in, their noses grazing against each other slightly, and kisses him again. Their lips press against each other, this time, enough that Thomas doesn’t doubt their reality. Roman’s thumb caresses his cheek, then his hand brushes down to Thomas’s chin in an almost crescent-like motion, lifting it up a little to access what must be a slightly easier angle. His fingertips are dotted along Thomas’s throat. Does he feel how Thomas has to swallow down the saliva building up in his mouth when the two of them part to take a breath?

Thomas isn’t sure what to do with his hands, even though he’s done this a hundred times before. It’s just so overwhelming, feeling lips on lips, and he has to keep most of his focus on not losing the last of his self-control. He traces his right hand up, along Roman’s stabilising arm, and he feels the starched fabric beneath his fingers, trying to distract himself from the electricity of one sensitive mouth against another. He grasps Roman’s epaulette, presses their mouths firmly together, then pulls away.

Roman’s face falls slightly as Thomas adjusts his position. He leans around to kiss the angle of jawbone under Roman’s ear, then traces up with his mouth to kiss his temple. Thomas leaves a trail of feather-light kisses along Roman’s brow, and his eyelid, and cheekbone, and just takes a moment to blink and feel Roman’s brow press along the movement of his eyelashes. Does Roman feel the huff of breath from Thomas’s nose on his own eyelashes? It’s the remnants of an incredulous, contented laugh. Can he feel the apple of Thomas’s cheek against the bridge of his nose? It’s because he’s smiling so broadly.

Then, Thomas kisses Roman’s mouth again, and again; lingering and resolute and trying to communicate every thought he’d had and he’d pushed away from himself, because he was too frightened to admit that he’d never, for a moment, stopped loving Roman. He takes the hand that Roman has laid on his chest, and he kisses the palm of it chastely.

When Roman’s rosy lips part, Thomas presses their mouths together again. He squeezes his eyes shut, because if he sees Roman right now, he thinks he might forget how to move. And he wants to move; he wants to move his tongue against Roman’s and taste that honey-sweetness of his mouth. He wants to wind Roman’s hair around his fingertips, just tightly enough to lightly tug, and he wants to glide his hand down along Roman’s chest, and around his back, so he can press their bodies together like they’ll fuse into one being. Like they could kiss forever; immortalised as a sculpture: Thomas loving Roman, Roman loving Thomas. Each being loved by the other, and not being able to tell where one ends and another begins.

Thomas falls back, his gut swooping at the sudden movement. It doesn’t hurt; the ground is soft, and the grass cradles his body. Roman falls with him, landing on top of Thomas and between his bent knees.

“I lost my balance,” murmurs Roman, smiling like it’s some kind of grand secret. He’s propped up by one arm, bent at the elbow for more stability.

Thomas giggles at that, and manages to pucker his lips enough to plant a small kiss at the indent between Roman’s lower lip and his chin.

“I love you,” he whispers, with all of the gravity of confessing his sins, but without a single drop of guilt.

For a moment, they just lie there, smiling, with their faces pressed against each other’s. They breathe in the same air, because the breaths between them are more special than whatever oxygen has not touched his Prince’s lungs.

Roman kisses Thomas on the mouth, flitting his tongue over his lips for a second. He moves away too quickly for Thomas to reciprocate, fighting the grin on his face to kiss the corner of Thomas’s mouth, and keeps kissing all the way down his jaw, and his neck.

When Roman finds Thomas’s pulse point, he pauses to on the skin a little, bringing it between his teeth so he can gently bite at the flesh, leaving a patch of purple skin that cools from the sudden warmth of Roman’s mouth when he continues his quest down Thomas’s neck.

Roman rests for a moment when he reaches Thomas’s sternum, resting his chin on the breastbone and looking up at Thomas’s face through his thick eyelashes. His smile crinkles up the corners of his eyes. Thomas can’t be pleasant to look at; it’s not his best angle, anyway, regardless of the fact that he’s bending his neck in a way that seems to double his chins. Still, Roman watches Thomas like how a flower would regard the sun, and traces patterns and swirls from Thomas’s clavicle to the end of his ribcage, and circling around his firm pectoral.

Usually when Thomas discovers that he’s naked in a dream, he panics. Joan had told him, once, that dreaming about being naked is about your feelings of being vulnerable, and how secure you are with yourself.

Thomas isn’t afraid. He’s not even a little bit anxious. He just pulls Roman’s face to his, and kisses him again, and again, and again, before they begin to relearn how their bodies fit together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you wanna hear an embarrassing secret? i had to research kissing for this bit, not because i haven't been kissed before, but because my brain keeps shorting out from the gay. the tongue comes out and i just. system failure. please reboot. all of the experiences in a relationship that i've had, and none of them are making out, because i'm too gay to function during them
> 
> so, yeah, i researched kissing, and i wrote kissing, and i have mirror-touch synthesia which is less overwhelming than it used to be but also just enough that i starting system failing. please rebooting. because i could feel Phantom Makeouts


	6. the one where virgil still hasn't realised that thomas has been into him since, like, april

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warnings for consent confusion more typical of romcoms written by a committee of straight white men than a fanfiction written in the spare time of a single oh my gosh i think i might be a straight white man
> 
> i went to finish the epilogue and realised i hadn't posted the chapter before. sup guys i've been in quarantine since the fourteenth and i still haven't written any fic so yeah how are you

Thomas awakens slowly that morning. He comes to the awareness that he’s warm, and that he’s a little sticky on his back from the sweat that comes from said warmth. He realises that someone’s arm is around his waist, even though he hasn’t brought anyone home in a long time, and that their hand is under his shirt, tracing abstract patterns into the skin of his abdomen.

In his hazy mind, there is nothing to worry about. Even when he remembers that, normally, people should panic when there’s a stranger in their bed, he isn’t afraid, because, by then, he’s remembered everything.

Humming contentedly, Thomas shuffles himself a little, hearing the fabric of his pillowcase rustle against his ear, just so he can press his back to Roman’s stomach. Roman’s hand stills for a moment as his arm stiffens, but then he goes right back to drawing those invisible lines that trail on Thomas’s skin, as though they’re painting the colour of love on a pale, slightly hairy, canvas.

“Hello,” says Roman. His chest rumbles with the low sound, and, though Thomas can’t see him, he can feel the smile on Roman’s lips as he kisses his hair.

Thomas replies with a “You, too,” which sounds a lot more mumbled.

That’s because it is. He woke up, like, a few minutes ago. Give him a break.

He asks, when he notices the discrepancy, “’ve you been watching me sleep?”

“Guilty as charged,” Roman replies. His free hand has moved from wherever it was before to start playing with Thomas’s hair, and he melts like chocolate chunks in hot milk.

Thomas just savours it. His mouth tastes gross, in that weirdly familiar way that it always does when he wakes up. Roman’s probably not got that problem, because he’s perfect. He’s perfect in the ways that Thomas idealises, with all the choice of a lapdog bred to serve humans-

“Honey?” asks Roman.

Oh. His body has tensed. His knees have bent reflexively, halfway to curling up into a ball. He must have kicked Roman accidentally. He should apologise.

“Tell me you don’t want this,” Thomas says, instead.

“If, by _‘this’_, you mean _‘your freezing cold feet on my legs’_, then, no; I don’t want that.” Roman drawls out that sentence in something approaching sarcasm, but, then, his voice softens. “It’s something else, isn’t it, my bard?”

“Thought I was your prince,” mumbles Thomas.

Roman squeezes Thomas’s hip, and he can feel his lips on the nape of his neck. “That, too. You’re everything to me.”

If he were a moral man, Thomas would pull away from Roman, but the thought of Deceit’s gentle face pin him still. The world becomes sharp and vivid, like turning the lights on after watching a movie in the dark for three hours.

“That’s the problem,” he manages to say. Does it come out as a mumble? A cry? A thought?

Does it matter?

Roman’s hand moves from Thomas’s hip as he rolls onto his back. The lack of contact, even just for the moment before he readjusts to settle on the other hip, is like a moment with no oxygen in the atmosphere. Thomas would die without Roman.

“How so?” asks Roman. “I love you more than sunlight or rain. I love your whole self.”

“Do you just want me because _I_ want _you_?” Thomas asks, too awake to not overthink, now. “If I told you to kiss me; fuck me; stop loving me, would you? You’re part of me. If I can force Deceit to reveal himself, who’s to say that I can’t force you to love me?”

Even though Roman, balanced on his elbow and on his side, is _literally above_ Thomas, who is lying in bed, he still looks like he’s been cast down into the literal pits of despair.

“Is that what you think of me? That all I feel for you is a simple mirroring of desire? That I don’t have my own emotions, independently from you?” he breathes. “Do you think my feelings are so inconsequential, that they can be sparked and stoppered with but a thought of yours?”

Thomas shuffles up in bed, to sit with his legs pressed against his chest. “I don’t know what to think! I want to love you – I _do_ love you! I love you so much; I can hardly breathe for it, sometimes. I’m just… Afraid.”

There’s a moment of silence. Roman shifts on the bed, cross-legged, so he and Thomas are at eye level.

“Do you want me to kiss you?” he asks.

Thomas blinks, his mouth falling open in bafflement. “What? Like, now? Because… Not really. Like, can we just-”

“Then forgive me for this, please,” says Roman, right before he leans in to push his tongue between Thomas’s lips.

It’s not wholly pleasant. Thomas was wrong about Roman not having stinky morning breath. That, or Thomas’s own breath is bad enough for two. Did he remember to brush his teeth last night?

Roman’s tongue licks against Thomas’s, who finds that he can barely move. Instead, he watches Roman, with his closed eyes and his extremely exposed body, as he kisses Thomas. He feels Roman’s tongue trace against his own, and along the fuzzy enamel of his back teeth, and around the roof of his mouth in a way that would have left a weird, tingling sensation if he wasn’t pressing down hard.

Thomas isn’t sure if he pulls away first, or if Roman does, but he knows that he’s wiping his mouth on the sleeve of his t-shirt as he shouts, “What the _fuck_ was that?”

Roman’s eyes are just as solemn and serious as they were before. His voice is serious, as he asks, “Do you understand, now?”

“No!” he shouts. “All I know is that you kissed me, when I-”

Thomas stutters. In hazardous expectation, Roman breaks into a smile and nods encouragingly.

“-When I didn’t want you to,” he finishes. His mouth is still hanging open, though, now, he can feel that the corners are turning upwards.

“Yep! I ignored your lack of consent and kissed you!” At first, Roman’s grin becomes wider.

Then it drops.

“That’s… That’s not so-”

“That’s not really something you should be-” Thomas is saying, until he just nods and says, “Yeah.”

“Yeah,” Roman also says, having stuttered to the same kind of stop.

For a moment, all they can do is look at each other until one of them breaks out into a grin, and then they're both giggling, at themselves and the other and the situation, and just because they're laughing. It might have gone on forever if they weren't interrupted.

“I heard Roman talking about a lack of consent in kissing and I was instantly transported back into last year.”

It’s Virgil’s familiar drawl. Thomas can see him rise up, smirking that exclusively Virgil smirk, and sees the exact moment that he processes everyone’s position. Thomas sees how his neck leans back and his chin tucks in, just a little. He sees the firm blink that Virgil does, before his eyes open wider under the lines on his forehead that his furrowed eyebrows deepen.

He hears the small intake of breath, and he sees how Virgil takes a split-second to adjust himself, so he doesn’t look so utterly betrayed.

“Roman, why are you naked?” Virgil’s question doesn’t sound like a question. It’s too flat; there’s no intonation anywhere in his speech.

He doesn’t give them a chance to answer, anyway.

“It’s okay, I understand,” he says, in a tone so hurried and pasted-over that it betrays the fact that, at least in Thomas’s opinion, he actually _doesn’t_ know what’s happening.

Thomas knows that, because Virgil’s tone is the same one that Thomas uses to hide when his heart’s been broken and he has to keep smiling. It’s how he’s spoken to all of his Sides since October.

“Virgil, it’s absolutely not what it looks like,” explains Roman, conjuring some clothes onto his body, as he scrambles to the foot of the bed to reach out to Virgil.

Virgil turns away from the outstretched hand. He can hide his face, but he can’t hide the way his voice hitches and cracks when he speaks. “No, seriously, it’s _fine_. Everything’s okay. You’ve got what you want, both of you, and that’s what matters.”

Roman grabs where Virgil used to be, a second too late. He’s sunken out, back into the back of Thomas’s mind.

* * *

Patton rises up once Thomas has finished dampening the front of Roman’s shirt with his tears, when the two of them are curled up on top of the unmade bed. Their legs are tangled together, and Thomas is resting his head on Roman’s chest, listening to a heartbeat that mirrors his own, despite their slightly desynchronised breaths.

“Hey, kiddos,” he says.

Thomas looks up. Despite Patton’s smile, he looks worried; pressing his index fingers together in front of his chest, and shifting his weight from one foot to the other, back and forth.

“Oh wait, are you guys having a cuddle party?” He beams, his arms dropping to his sides with his hands flexed out at near-right angles. “Can I join? Please please _please_?”

Thomas moves his hands so that they’re on the mattress instead of clutching Roman’s shirt, and pushes himself up into a sitting position. The blankets shuffle as he does, and continue to do so when Roman follows him.

Once again, Patton looks sad, and, once again, it’s Thomas’s fault. “I guess that’s a no?”

Thomas bites on his lip. Sometimes, when you’re hurt, causing pain in a different area helps to distract you from it.

It doesn’t work with love.

“Only if… It’s…”

He scrunches his eyes shut, brushing against Roman’s fingers with his own. Roman takes the hint, and his hand.

“I’ve been lying,” he says.

Patton’s brows furrow, his lips drawing into that concerned pout that makes Thomas’s heart do something weird. “What? Why?”

The words won’t come out. What if Patton hates him? Like, that’s a stupid thought, because Thomas is pretty sure that Patton’s incapable of hatred, but _still_. Also, if he says it now, then he’ll have to tell Logan, then Virgil, and what if they think that he loves them less, just because he loved Roman first?

“Would it help if Logan was here?” asks Roman softly, because Roman’s clever and kind like that.

He nods, as Patton asks, “Huh? You need Logan?”

Thomas isn’t really sure which one of them summons Logan, but then he’s there, right beside Patton.

“Is the cool-off period done? We’re back to talking to him, now?” Logan asks.

He opens his mouth as if to speak once again, but the feelings flood from Thomas as if he’s opened a dam. All of the fear goes away, to be replaced by clumsy, jumbled, sincere words.

“I love you. All four of you,” he finds himself saying. “Like, _love_-love love you. As in, kissing, dating, _everything_. At first, it was just Roman, but then I realised that I was in love with Patton when we were doing the whole switch-around shapeshifting thing, and I broke up with Roman, because I was so scared!”

Patton stares, wide-eyed. “You _broke up_ with Roman?”

Thomas doesn’t stop. He is on a train of thought, and he’s spent way too long repressing it, and he’s _not_ going to try and make a metaphor out of the train thing, because it’ll distract him from what he’s doing, which is taking his secret and discarding it until all that’s left is love.

“I tried to stop myself, but then I was falling in love with Logan and Virgil, too, and then all four of you started to date, and I had to repress everything even harder. I was _lying_ when I said everything was okay, and that I was happy for you. I was angry. I was _jealous_. I hated it. I hated feeling that way, but I _did_, and it was awful.”

He looks up, from Logan, to Patton, and to Roman, then back to Patton again. All of the fear and anxiety has gone away. It becomes easier to speak.

“That’s why Deceit showed up,” he explains. “I was having to lie to myself – to you guys – about my feelings, every day. He… Kind of got sick of it. He explained it to me, later, and then Roman visited me in my dreams, and now…”

Thomas sort of gestures around the room with his free hand. Now, three of them are here.

“I understand,” says Logan, “but, before we continue, I must ask a question.”

“Go ahead.”

“Have you spoken to Virgil, today?”

Thomas kind of feels Roman’s fingers curl and stiffen, but he says, “Um, yeah. Roman was naked and kissing me without my consent.”

“_What_?” snaps Logan, way too harshly.

“He was naked, and he was kissing me,” Thomas explains. “It wasn’t the best kiss. Like, it really sucked.”

Roman raises his hand. “In my defence-”

“Shut your mouth,” hisses Patton, with way more force than Thomas thinks he’s ever heard from him before. If Patton _was_ capable of hatred, this might be what it would look like. Maybe. Thomas isn’t sure.

“Huh? You’re angry?” Thomas asks. “Why?”

“Because _none of us_ should be acting without your consent, especially when it’s _something like that_!”

Logan kind of yells that last bit, loud enough that Roman recoils, taking the hand that was holding Thomas’s with him. Thomas kind of follows, trying to grab the hand again. Roman doesn’t let him, so he just settles for grasping his sleeve.

“Yeah, no, I don’t really get it,” he says.

“You’re acting weird, like, you’re not worried, and you’re not…” murmurs Patton, before his eyebrows rise, and he exclaims, “Where’s Virgil?”

Normally, this is the time when Virgil would pop up. It is a sufficiently drama-infused moment. The other Sides seem worried enough, even if Thomas isn’t really feeling it.

Virgil, however, remains un-popped up. Un-pop upped. How do you conjugate that kind of verb-direction combination?

Patton waves his arm in summoning, but that also doesn’t work. Logan and Roman’s attempts, likewise, fail.

“That’s what I wanted to talk about, when you first summoned me,” says Logan, running the hand that just failed to obtain Virgil through his hair. “I think that Virgil’s ducked out again.”

“Probably,” Thomas agrees. “Like, I’m not even worried about you two returning my feelings, and this whole time I’ve been terrified that you’ll love me back just because I want you to, ‘cause I’m _ultimately in control of myself_, or whatever you said, Logan.”

“We need to get to Virgil,” Roman tells him. He’s sort of moved himself so that he’s kneeling over Thomas, with one outstretched leg nestled between his calves.

Thomas shrugs. “Is it all that urgent?”

Roman doesn’t look any calmer. Eh, he should’ve expected that.

“Don’t you _love_ Virgil?”

“I mean, _yeah_,” says Thomas, “but he already knows. He kept looking at me, and then, after Deceit, he was trying to get me to tell you all.”

“What if he doesn’t? What if he thinks you’re abandoning him, because you only wanted us three?” asks Roman, before dropping one hell of a bomb of a sentence. “What if he hates you, now?”

“Oh, _fuck_,” says Thomas, and he lets himself fall backwards to the pillows.

* * *

He rises back up again in Virgil’s familiar room. It’s different from usual, being in Thomas’s bedroom and not his living room, but there are some similarities. It’s still all dark and foreboding and covered in spider webs, for one thing. The clock on the wall turns rapidly, and freezes whenever Thomas looks too closely at the hands. Around Thomas, on the bed, several plush toys are piled.

“Oh,” murmurs Virgil, sitting at the foot of Thomas’s bed. He has a metaphysical copy of the bear that Joan gave to Thomas in his lap, and he’s fidgeting with its paw between his forefinger and thumb. “You found me.”

He doesn’t sound happy. Thomas knows, in the back of his mind, that the actual emotion is _disappointment_, but he’s too overjoyed to properly understand it, right now.

“Roman kissed me,” Thomas says, instead. “He kissed me after asking, and I was like, _not really_, and he kissed me anyway to prove to me that he didn’t have to do what I wanted, because I was so scared that I was forcing him to like me, and that I’d be forcing the rest of you to like me, too.”

He crawls forwards, closer to Virgil.

“I should have known that I can’t really control any of my Sides, least of all you,” Thomas smiles, leaning in, and speaks in a soft intone. “I got defensive yesterday, and I’m sorry. Can I make it up to you?”

Virgil looks up only when Thomas is close enough that he can probably feel his breath on his skin, and he most likely wasn’t expecting a Thomas so close to his face, because he falls backwards, only to be caught by Roman’s steady arms.

Jerking away from Roman, he stumbles onto the floor in a four-point landing, before clambering up to a standing position. He brushes the dust from his clothes, before wrapping his hoodie closer around his body.

“It’s not that I’m not delighted to see you, and hear you rub in my face how you’ve got my boyfriends now,” Virgil drawls, “except I’m not. Fuck off, Thomas.”

“There seems to be a misunderstanding,” says Logan, over Thomas’s wordless noises of disbelief.

“What is there to misunderstand? I saw Roman naked on Thomas’s bed, and now all four of you are in my room.” He bends down to pick the bear back up, and places it closer to the middle of the bed, so it won’t fall off again. “I know he’s been in love with you all this whole time. I’m not stupid.”

“Then how are you missing the point this much?” Roman demands.

“Princey, wait,” says Thomas, raising his hand like he’s soothing some kind of spooked horse. Actually, Roman shapeshifted into a horse, once, months ago. It was weird. They unanimously decided to not play that weird horse dating sim phone game again.

Logan approaches Virgil, close enough to speak gently, but far enough away that Virgil won’t get stressed and try to run. Huh. Maybe Virgil’s the spooked horse.

“Virgil, I believe that you are experiencing cognitive distortions again,” he says. His tone is measured. Thomas would happily listen to a thousand boring textbooks read by Logan.

Virgil rubs something from under his eye, smearing his eyeshadow across his cheek and along the outside of his index finger.

“Logan, _please_,” he seems to beg. “Please don’t give me hope.”

“Don’t, then,” says Thomas.

He’s not sure how he’s managed to slide off the bed, and stand on his own two feet, but he’s doing it. Even though his whole body feels like it’s trembling, like a newly born deer who is also on ice, and, _yeah_, Bambi is a good movie, he stands.

“Don’t give him hope, Logan,” Thomas says, through the pounding of his heart in his throat.

He walks forward, taking step by terrifying step towards Virgil. Slowly, he reaches out a hand, which grasps Virgil’s shoulder, and which slides down his arm, until they’re standing hand-in-hand.

“You taught me how to breathe, last time we were here,” he says.

There’s no specific verb or adverb for how he speaks; he just opens his mouth and lets his heart come out.

Thomas says, “You taught me how to breathe, and I realised that I’d do anything for you. I mean, I’d always found you attractive, like, if you pinned me against a wall, I’d probably faint, but… That was the moment I knew I loved you. That I _love_ you.”

Virgil’s whole body seems to tense, and his hand is limp in Thomas’s, but he doesn’t pull away.

“You don’t know that I love you, don’t you?” Thomas murmurs. “All this time, I thought you were angry at me for having feelings for you, and hiding from them, and you didn’t even _know_.”

“I _don’t_ know,” corrects Virgil, biting the words out, “because you _can’t_ love me.”

Thomas’s whole body slackens. He’d have dropped Virgil’s hand if it wasn’t clenched around his, tightly enough that it feels like his bones are being rearranged.

“Because you’re a Side, and I’m your Centre.” Thomas nods once, to lower his head in understanding. “I understand.”

“Well, that’s not fair! I don’t care that I’m just a Side; I love all of you!” shouts Roman.

Virgil shakes his head. “No, because I’m Anxiety! I’m overwhelming, and I make you do things you don’t want to do. That’s… A relationship shouldn’t be built like that. I’d be forcing you.”

“I’m the _Centre_,” Thomas responds. “I was so scared to tell you, and everyone else, because I thought that _I’d_ be forcing _you_ into a relationship.”

“Well, that’s stupid. Your brain’s a thinking machine. You can’t control every inch of it,” snorts Virgil. “Like, you can control your temper, but you can’t stop feeling angry.”

“I agree! I’m _feelings_,” Patton adds. “_Gosh_, it’s confusing.”

“You taught me to breathe,” Thomas murmurs, grasping Virgil’s hand again.

He intertwines their fingers; thumb next to thumb, pinky by pinky. Virgil’s hand is colder than Thomas’s, and definitely colder than Roman’s, but only by a few degrees. It’s nice, for their bodies to have that slight difference. It doesn’t make sense, since they all have the same body, but it’s nice.

“You taught me how to breathe, and how to control my reactions to feeling anxious,” says Thomas. “That was _you_, Virgil. I don’t stop being worried, or frightened, but I don’t panic, and that’s because of you.”

He squeezes Virgil’s hand, and brings their locked knuckles to brush against his lips.

Virgil squeezes back.

“I know it’s scary, but I believe in you.” He scarcely feels like he’s talking. He’s just breathing, and shaping the words with his tongue and teeth and lips, and hoping that the heart on his sleeve is doing the talking for him. “Yesterday, I was frightened, and I felt cornered, and I took it out on you. You didn’t deserve that. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry about that. I was pressuring you, instead of talking it out,” murmurs Virgil. “I’m sorry, too. It’s okay.”

Thomas’s fingers are warm from where they catch his unsteady breaths, intertwined as they are with Virgil’s. “This would be weird if we weren’t me, but, you’re one of the men that I love. Will you allow me the honour of acting upon these feelings for you?”

Virgil says, just as quietly, and just as shakily, “Only if you want me.”

Kissing Virgil is nothing like kissing Roman. Roman’s arms are strong; protective. He always seems to know what he’s doing with his mouth, and Thomas is usually happy to relinquish the lead to him

Virgil doesn’t know what he’s doing. His teeth scrape against Thomas’s lips at first, and then he puckers his lips too much. Thomas cups Virgil’s cheeks in his hands, and presses his lips to them, over and over, loosely, gently, and adoringly. He dots in closer and closer to Virgil’s mouth, until they’re both kissing each other’s lips again. It’s not chaste, but Thomas is pretty sure that if he introduces the slightest bit of tongue, that Virgil might actually faint. It would be fun to find out, but, before he can, a bit of a static shock transfers from Virgil’s lips to Thomas’s, just enough that they have to rest their foreheads together to giggle a little.

“I’m glad that we’re all on the same page, now,” says Patton hesitantly, though the smile is evident in his voice. “Thing is, I’m feeling a teensy bit freaked out because _spider curtains_, and can we _please_ enjoy the making out somewhere that isn’t your room, Virgil?”

Thomas breaks away from Virgil, just enough to reach out to the other three Sides without letting go of the one in his arms.

Patton runs to fit in the little gap between Thomas and Virgil’s bodies, while Logan puts his arm behind Virgil so his hand rests on his waist. He reaches out to Roman, to complete the circle, but Roman just smiles. He wraps his arm around Thomas’s shoulders, and tangles his fingers in Patton’s hair. He kisses Logan’s temple, and touches his other hand to Virgil’s upper back, probably.

Then, warm and safe, the Sides and their Centre sink back into reality.


	7. a deserved soft epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> @min t(unu) this is me flipping you off for updating pick a side just as i was getting this finished

The first time that Logan kisses Thomas, he does so hesitantly.

Okay, so it’s not the first kiss they’ve ever exchanged. That wasn’t yesterday, or last night, when Thomas had spent hours crying and being held and taken care of by his sides, who had just become his… Boyfriends? _‘Boyfriends’_ seems too casual, and _‘partners’_ too formal.

Ha. _Part_-ners. Because they’re all parts of his personality?

Either way, that night had been spent in overwhelming emotions, where Thomas could barely stand the brush of knuckles against each other, and even the slightest press of lips sent him into tears. Kissing hadn’t particularly been a priority, then.

The first time that Logan kisses Thomas is actually three times, in quick succession.

The two of them are in the kitchen, with Thomas having just finished washing up from breakfast. His hair still stuck to his forehead from the shower, and he wasn’t in particularly nice clothes – just a t-shirt and the same jeans he wore on Tuesday and Thursday. Because, obviously, when you’ve finally gotten around to dealing with the issues you’ve had for over a year and finally score dates you actually want, you should absolutely dress up in clothes that you found on your bedroom floor.

The other Sides are doing their own thing, either in Thomas’s mind or his bedroom, but Logan had insisted on joining him to ensure that he eats a healthy, nutritional breakfast, and that he drinks something other than coffee, or something like that. And Thomas had done that, thanks to Logan’s incessant reminders, and also thanks to the fact that Thomas couldn’t bring himself to deny Logan his incessant reminders. Then, he’d taken a shower, and gotten dressed, and Logan had the entire time. He’d reminded Thomas to wash up, so, obviously, Thomas had to do that next, immediately, no matter what plans he’d had.

He’d had no plans. Well, he has one.

All the while, all through the morning, Logan had been watching Thomas. Except for when he was in the shower. And when he was getting dressed. But, otherwise, all morning.

It should feel invasive, to be watched so intently. Thomas knows, normally, that it does. Even when he’s on stage, people blink and turn to look at other performers. Unfaltering stares like Logan’s belong in nature documentaries, as the predator stalks its prey.

Thomas doesn’t feel like prey. He’s not afraid of Logan. The whole idea of being afraid of Logan is laughable. Logan is smart, straightforward. He’s a little literal, and rather vain, and it took him a while to accept the existence of his feelings, but he’s kind-hearted. Thomas loves him.

“May I do something?” asks Logan, as Thomas dries his hands off with a tea towel and observes the tower of damp dishes in the drying rack.

“Honestly,” says Thomas, glancing back to see that Logan still hasn’t dropped his stare, “you could do most things, and I would thank you.”

Logan’s expression switches to a mischievous smirk that looks more like something that would be found on literally _any_ of the other Sides’ faces. “If I signed you up for a full-time university course?”

Thomas feels his lips press against his incisors, crinkled and tightened, but he still shakes a hand. “Probably not that. But that’s not something you’d do, is it?”

“Of course not!” Logan laughs for a moment – like, it’s a little stifled, but he genuinely _laughs_, and Thomas doesn’t think his heart can cope with such a sound for too long, but he also wants it on loop for the rest of his life – and continues. “That would be wholly illogical. You have built a life that you are proud of, and taking a career path that you truly love. A university course, while educational, would be a distraction, and possibly a deterrent, from pursuing your current employment.”

Thomas hums. “Good to know. So, what is it you wanted to do?”

A floorboard creaks behind him. Thomas spins around, dropping the towel on the stack of damp dishes, to find Logan barely inches away. Their breath mingles in the air. Thomas still has a bit of toast stuck in his teeth, he thinks, and starts scooping his tongue into his molars so he can swallow it. Logan smells like Thomas’s favourite brand of mint toothpaste, and of the coffee which Logan demands to only be consumed in moderation. Wait, is that mocha?

“With your consent, Thomas,” Logan says, “I would very much like to kiss you.”

Is Thomas’s mouth too dry, or is he salivating too much? He swallows, anyway.

“I had Crofters this morning,” he croaks out, for lack of any other words in his head except for _Logan_.

Logan’s smile is like the Mona Lisa’s, if the Mona Lisa smiled like a cat who caught a mouse. “I am aware. May I kiss you?”

Thomas nods.

Smirking, Logan tells him, “I require verbal consent, Thomas.”

Oh, that bastard’s fully aware of what he’s doing, isn’t he? Does he know that Thomas’s heart is pounding hard enough that his pulse feels like it’s punching him in the throat, over and over and over? He probably does. Logan knows basically everything that Thomas does.

“_Yes_,” Thomas manages to choke out.

The first kiss is a brief test. Just two lips, held against each other for a moment, pursing out to make closer contact.

The second kiss is, in a word, underwhelming.

Logan’s tongue flicks against Thomas’s bottom lip, and pushes between both lips as Thomas gasps. Then, it is very, well, _plain_. An average amount of wetness; Logan has not produced an excess of saliva, and Thomas is fairly certain that he’s swallowed back most of his.

Carefully, Logan measures out Thomas’s mouth like he’s checking a route on a paper map. There’s no passion, even when Thomas tries to introduce some with playful flicks of his own tongue, and attempts to scrape his teeth gently along Logan’s lips.

By the time that Logan has pushed his tongue to the back of Thomas’s mouth, he can’t take it anymore. Thomas pulls back. They’ve been joined at the mouth for far too long, and it started to feel awkward about a minute ago. Both of their hands are hanging limply at their sides.

“What gives?” asks Thomas. “You were basically licking my tonsils. Were you trying to lick the Crofters from my throat, or something?”

“Or something,” says Logan, lazily waving his hand like he’s swatting a fly. “Thomas, do you trust me?”

“Yes,” Thomas immediately replies, because, even if Logan’s a terrible kisser, he still wants to spend his life with him, and he still feels like his heart’s grown wings and is trying to burst from his chest when they’re together.

And because he _does_ trust Logan. Why wouldn’t he?

“Then permit me to kiss you once more.”

And who is Thomas to deny Logic?

The third time that they kiss, Logan is not hesitant.

He holds Thomas’s face in between his hands, gently, like he’d squash him if he rested his palms. His thumbs push into the softness of the flesh behind Thomas’s dimples, and his splayed fingertips dot along across Thomas’s cheekbones to where his jaw hinges against his skull. Logan’s pinky fingers are on Thomas’s throat, at the pulse point, not pressed hard enough to block air, but just enough that Thomas’s racing heart is blatantly obvious.

It’s kind of mortifying. He’s completely unashamed.

The third time that they kiss, Logan draws in close, looking at Thomas through his lashes and his lenses before his eyes flutter shut, and Thomas’s do, too, because Logan kisses in the same way he asks for permission, and in the same way he smiles.

Everything before was testing, Thomas realises. Data gathering. Discovering each miniscule response that Thomas was barely aware of making, and connecting them with the actions that caused them.

Logan kisses Thomas like he’s kissed him a hundred times before, and it feels like he’s never been kissed before. His tongue flickers along the side of Thomas’s, as quickly and briefly as a static shock, before becoming shallower; gentler.

Thomas presses forwards, grabbing Logan’s tie and pulling it to his own sternum. He wants more; he needs more. Logan’s too gentle, and Thomas needs all of him. He needs to drown in Logan’s kisses, in Logan’s love, in Logan’s very existence.

He’s not rewarded. The grips of the fingers on his face just tighten like tiny vices, and a thumb pushes down on Thomas’s open lips and his front two teeth.

Thomas risks opening his eyes. Logan is just as close as he was before, with just as wicked a smile creasing his eyes. His eyes flicker down to the other’s lips, then back to make steady eye contact.

“Come now, Thomas,” he murmurs, and Thomas can pick up on every breath, and every click of Logan’s lips and tongue and throat on every phonetic. “Be a little patient, won’t you?”

And that’s about the time that Thomas has to grab onto Logan’s wrists, because his knees decided to stop working.

* * *

“Good morning, sweetheart!” Patton beams, as soon as Thomas enters the kitchen. “Hey, I’m making us all some coffee.”

Indeed, the bittersweet scent of coffee is filling the air, and the coffee maker is gurgling its last gurgles before it’s ready.

“It’s funny. I thought none of us would be morning people, since I’m not, like, at all,” says Thomas, leaning against the kitchen counter and watching Patton retrieve two mugs from the cupboard. “But you’re up early, and you’re happy.”

Patton smiles, as sweet as the caramel of his eyes, and answers the question that Thomas didn’t even properly voice. “Well, sure, honey! You’ve been taking care of yourself more, and that’s meant you’ve been eating more healthily, and that gives your body more effective fuel, which means you sleep less!”

Thomas leans in, his forehead pressing against Patton’s, and their noses poking into each other’s cheeks, before their lips meet in a gentle kiss.

Patton’s kisses are unasked for, and freely given. Little pecks on his eyelids when he’s awake and pretending that he’s asleep; tiny smooches pressed against his lips when it’s time to sleep again; and every other kind throughout the day.

With the others, Thomas can sometimes forget that kissing can be anything but breathtaking. He gets so caught up in skin against skin and tongues tracing teeth that all he can think of is the passion and pleasure. Patton, however, doesn’t fill him with the crawling sparks of energy that a new relationship tends to give. Instead, he makes him feel… _Content_, Thomas supposes. Yes.

Contentment is good. It’s the comfort of familiar love. It’s something like opening the blinds in the morning, and standing in the kitchen, watching the outside world as he sips on his coffee, with Patton’s arms loosely wrapped around his waist.

This love is like constancy of Logan combined with the whimsy of Roman, but still so completely unlike either of them.

“You know, that doesn’t really make sense,” says Thomas, once they’ve broken apart and he’s been able to take a sip of coffee.

Patton hums, readjusting his glasses with the hand that used to hold Thomas’s mug. “What?”

“I think there was a leap in logic, in your explanation about food and sleep.” He hides his chuckle behind his mug. “Like… Ugh, the coffee’s not kicked in yet. I don’t know, it’s like, if you sleep less when you’re eating healthy, then why do healthy people need to sleep for, like, eight hours?”

Patton laughs, and it’s wonderful. _“Yet well I know, that music hath a far more pleasing sound,”_ Shakespeare wrote about his Dark Lady. It was not a sonnet of insults, Thomas knows, but an ode to the humanity of one’s lover, and Patton is so beautifully human. His voice is a voice. His laugh is a laugh. Despite how he exists, he is human.

“Yeah, I don’t think I caught onto all of it. I might have fallen asleep while Logan was explaining,” he grins.

Thomas raises an eyebrow. “Isn’t that rude?”

“We were in _bed_!” Patton retorts with a playful smile. “I was _sleepy_, and his voice is so relaxing! Can you blame me?”

Once again, Thomas has to lean in, because if he goes for a _second_ longer without kissing somewhere on Patton’s face then he might spontaneously combust from all the love in his heart. His lips bump against Patton’s forehead with a bit more force than he intended, and his front teeth dig into his lips as he plants the kiss there, right above his eyebrow.

He pulls back, grinning like a fool, with breaths that turn to laughs when he exhales. When his eyes meet Patton’s again, crinkled by the width of his smile but still catching the shine of the early morning sun, he finds himself laughing again.

What’s the point of self-denial, after all this time?

Two half-finished mugs of coffee sit abandoned on the counter, occasionally jostled by hands that reach out to steady two bodies pulled close against each other. Patton wriggles onto the counter properly, with Thomas giving him a little boost, because nothing’s worse than make-out sessions that end because one person was in an awkward position for too long.

Now, Patton is a few inches above Thomas, and they both have to tilt their heads to see each other. Well, not that they can actually see each other properly, because they’re still so close that their coffee-scented breath mingles in the shared space beneath their noses. Almost everything seems blurry at this distance, except for Patton’s brown eyes; as brown as chocolate and coffee and the most beautiful colour that Thomas knows.

When Thomas looks in the mirror, he can see that exact same colour in his own eyes. He can press his own hands together in the same way as the two of them are doing right now, interlocking his fingers and tracing circles into his palm with his thumb, but why the heck would he want to do that when he has Patton, and Roman, and Logan, and Virgil? What would be the point of not loving every part of himself as much as he possibly can?

Thomas welcomes the awareness of how close the half-full mugs are to the edge of the counter, because that means that Virgil’s here.

“Geez,” he’s saying, rolling his eyes as he carries the mugs to the sink, where he tips the cold coffee out. “Seriously, you two, _Terrence_ got us this mug. If either of you broke it, Patton, you’d be crying for hours, you realise that, right?”

Patton pulls his face into a grin, even as he scratches his neck bashfully. “I’m sorry, I just got distracted!”

Thomas watches as Virgil raises an eyebrow in a very sleek, silently sarcastic way that Thomas himself has never really been able to replicate without looking incredibly silly.

“You got distracted,” Virgil repeats dryly, “while drinking coffee.”

“By kissing,” nods Patton.

Slowly smirking, Virgil shakes his head. “That was dangerous, don’t you think? What if the stove was on? What if you knocked the mugs off the counter and stepped in the shards? That would have really hurt, you know.”

It’s okay, though. Even though Patton’s eyes are wide, Thomas’s heart hasn’t been flooded with that cold wave of terror.

“If Logan knew, he might ban you from kissing in the kitchen,” continues Virgil.

Patton gasps. “No! Kitchen kisses are the best! You get to stop for snacks, if you want to.”

“I might tell on him, if you’re not taking care not to put yourselves in danger.”

Virgil’s voice tends to be lower than Thomas’s, and he can tell that he’s taking full advantage of that by the crinkles around his eyes as he smiles.

“Please don’t tell!” exclaims Patton, clutching the knot that keeps his hoodie tied on his shoulders.

By this point, Virgil’s voice is trembling. There’s a fluttering feeling in Thomas’s chest, and it’s taking all of his willpower to not start kissing Virgil or Patton – whoever’s nearest – immediately, because Virgil’s still talking.

He’s got one finger pressed to his chin, looking between both of them from behind his long fringe, and his smile’s so wide that it bares a little of his pearly white teeth.

“Well, I guess I might forget to,” he giggles. Thomas wants that sound on loop in his ears forever, because he didn’t even know that Virgil _could_ giggle, and now he’s heard it once, he might die if he stopped hearing it. “I guess you’ll have to figure out how to distract me, huh?”

Really, Virgil shouldn’t have been so surprised at their simultaneous choice to half-wrestle him onto the countertop instead of Patton. The heart wants what it wants, after all, right?

* * *

Thomas loves to dream. He loves the stories his mind makes up as he sleeps, and all the adventures they go on together, even if the memories are fleeting and nonsensical when he wakes up. In some ways, he even loves the nail-bitingly nerve-wracking nightmares, because of the small amount of power his Creativity has into twisting them into something that can be, though not pleasant, is not wholly terrifying. Something dark, yes, but not hopeless.

After all, how can he be afraid when his Prince is always with him?

His favourite dreams, the ones where his heart always calms when he finds himself in them, are the dreams that take place in a mossy clearing in the woods. There are no bugs that would crawl on his skin if he were to lie down on the earth, and the moss is as soft as a velvet pillow on a gentle, grassy mattress. No matter if he’s in full plated armour or a crop top and short shorts, he’s never too hot or too cold.

No matter the nightmare he may have been having before, he’s never in danger, and he’s never alone.

In the morning, Thomas will wake to Virgil stressing over the alarm clock, and Logan talking about the importance of maintaining a good sleep schedule. Patton will be experimenting with different syrups in everyone’s coffee, while still taking care to remember everyone’s preferred flavours. In the morning, Thomas might have to stop himself from crying from how much he loves his Sides. He might not cry, though, or he might not stop himself, and he will be so, so happy.

But, for now, he lies in the clearing under the indigo sky, watching the sky as Roman watches his face in profile. They will talk about everything, and nothing, and about every part of each other that they adore.

And, even if it’s just for a little while, they’ll live happily ever after.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there's an omake and it's just remus showing up and thomas being like "oh no he's hot!!!" and that's the extent of it
> 
> thanks for reading!!!!!! i hope you also now feel the ache of a lack of kisses against your pulse point as your partner Firmly Grasps You by the waist or whatever


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